+
upworthy
More

These photos and stories reveal what childhood was like before U.S. labor laws.

For centuries in the United States, child labor was all too common.

Despite efforts from educators to encourage primary school, an immigration boom in the latter half of the 19th century resulted in a new pool of child workers. The influx of low-earning, compliant young laborers coincided with the rapid expansion of industrial positions in mills and factories.

Children worked long hours, often in cramped, dangerous conditions, to help support their families.


Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee/Library of Congress.

At the turn of the 20th century, social reformers took aim at child labor.

The National Child Labor Committee used photography to bring attention to the children's abysmal working conditions and push for reform at the state level.

Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee/Library of Congress.

These are just a few of the more than 5,000 images available from the Library of Congress. The images and captions from photographer Lewis W. Hine provide some insight and clarity into the experiences of the children themselves, who grew up way too soon.

Small and babyfaced. Black and white. On farms and in factories. From coast to coast. Here are 14 of their stories.

1. Lalar Blanton, 10, sneaks a glimpse outside during her shift at the Rhodes Manufacturing Co. in Lincolnton, North Carolina. (1908)

Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee /Library of Congress.

2. This 16-year-old in Fort Worth, Texas, works seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. as a messenger and newsboy. He earns $15-$18 a week. (1913)

Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee /Library of Congress.

3. Boys reset pins at the Arcade Bowling Alley in Trenton, New Jersey. The boys work until after midnight. Sometimes, kids selling concessions work late too, but mostly during baseball season. (1909)

Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee/Library of Congress.

4. A few boys join the men working as oyster shuckers in Apalachicola, Florida. (1909)

Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee/Library of Congress.

5. A little girl in Hoboken, New Jersey, tends a corner newspaper stand. She's unable to tell the photographer her name or age. (1912)

Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee/Library of Congress.

6. These young boys help their family strip tobacco in Bowling Green, Kentucky. They frequently miss school to help with the arduous process. (1916)

Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee/Library of Congress.

7. This young spinner in Roanoke, Virginia, told the photographer she was 14. He said, "It is doubtful." (1911)


Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee/Library of Congress.

8. Elwood Palmer Cooper, 7, has already worked for a year on this miller's wagon in Wilmington, Delaware. He carries 25-pound bags of flour from the wagon to stores to earn 25 cents a week in spending money. (1910)

Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee/Library of Congress.

9. 6-year-old Warren Frakes of Comanche County, Oklahoma, picked 41 pounds of cotton yesterday. He has about 20 pounds in his bag right now. (1916)

Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee/Library of Congress.

10. Daisy Langford, 8, is in her first season at a cannery in Seaford, Delaware. She's having a difficult time keeping up, placing caps on the cans at the rate of 40 per minute. (1910)

Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee/Library of Congress.

11. A child assists a glass blower in Grafton, West Virginia. He works nine hours a day in this cramped position. Next week, he's on the night shift. (1908)

Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee/Library of Congress.

12. Frank is 14, but he's helped his father in the mines for three years. He spent some time in the hospital after his leg was crushed by a coal car. (1906)

Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee/Library of Congress.

13. After selling into the night, 12-year-old Antoinette Siminger of Cincinnati is nearly out of baskets. "Basket! Five cents each!" she shouts. (1908)

Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee/Library of Congress.

14. It's a cold February day in Utica, New York, but these newsies are still selling papers. (1910)

Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee/Library of Congress.

It took the Great Depression and years of advocacy to substantially do away with child labor.

Following the economic downtown and so many people facing unemployment, jobs once held by children were opened up to adults. Soon, new technology mechanized jobs once reserved for small hands. And these new tools required semi-skilled adults at the helm.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 finally placed limits on child labor and set a national minimum wage for the first time. Just over a decade later, the law was amended to include agriculture, transportation, and communications businesses. Finally, most children in the U.S. were out of the workplace and into the classroom.

Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee/Library of Congress.

While child labor is no longer commonplace in the U.S., the problem persists around the world.

Over 100 million children still work in hazardous conditions on farms, in mines, and in domestic positions. Many are exposed to toxic substances and harmful chemicals, and they aren’t given the chance to go to school.

Some countries have have made small advancements through legislation and public awareness, but the fight for millions of lost childhoods continues.

A boy in India loads bricks onto a horse cart. Photo by STR/AFP/Getty Images.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

Keep ReadingShow less
Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

Keep ReadingShow less
Innovation

A student accidentally created a rechargeable battery that could last 400 years

"This thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going." ⚡️⚡️

There's an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

There's no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

Keep ReadingShow less

A beautiful cruise ship crossing the seas.

Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

Keep ReadingShow less