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America at 250: The Revolutionary Spark

A Smithsonian magazine special report

When a Photographer Turned His Focus on Social Injustice, It Helped Usher in the First Child Labor Laws

Lewis Hine didn’t consider his job as taking pictures; it was “detective work.” Sometimes gaining access with ruse and subterfuge, he captured stark images that touched hearts and changed minds

KID COTTON
Two young boys at a Georgia cotton mill. Their slim arms and tiny hands were considered ideal for machine work. Library of Congress

When Lewis Hine began traveling the country in 1908 to document the working lives of children, around two million Americans younger than 15 were full-time laborers. A reformer and an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), Hine, who trained as a sociologist, used his Graflex camera for what he called “detective work”: He’d materialize outside a factory or mine or cannery (sometimes in the guise of a Bible salesman) and wangle his way in. Other times, management denied him entry, even threatening him with physical violence.

Hine found the assignments trying and infuriating. “There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers,” Hine said in 1908. “The object of employing children is not to train them, but to get high profits from their work.” He considered photography the most direct and vivid means of evoking the public's horror at this exploitation. As he put it, “If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a camera.” Hine compiled the caption details himself, sometimes scribbling secret notes with a hand in his pocket, in case an overseer happened to be observing.

These photos, taken from 1909 to 1911, display Hine’s arrestingly direct style, which moved hearts and changed minds: In 1916, the NCLC celebrated the signing of the first federal child labor law. Four years later, in 1920, the population of American child laborers was estimated to have nearly halved compared with 1910.

Did you know? Inside the National Child Labor Committee

  • Established in 1904 and chartered by Congress in 1907, the committee was dedicated to exposing the conditions and ending the practice of child labor.

  • Early advocates included progressives Jane Addams and Florence Kelley, as well as Owen Reed Lovejoy, known as the “children’s statesman."

  • Lewis Hine was hired in 1908 and spent more than two years documenting the appalling conditions facing young children in U.S. factories, mines and other sites of exploitative work.

  • Besides the first child labor law, signed in 1916, the NCLC helped win major legislation for all workers by contributing to the passage of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.

Cranberry picking
Fanny Breto—Hine recorded her age as 9—at work with her father in a cranberry bog in Wareham, Massachusetts. Library of Congress
COAL MINORS
In an anthracite mine, “breaker boys” removed impurities from coal by hand before shipment. Library of Congress
Sisters
A November 1908 photograph shows Carrie Blanchard, right, in Chester, South Carolina. “Don’t know how old I am,” she told Hine. “Mother can tell. She keeps track of these things. She begins to work in mill tomorrow. ’Speks I’ll go to help.” Her mother informed Hine that the daughter was 10. Her younger sister, left, was not yet working. Library of Congress
Train Kid
When Hine captured this image of 16-year-old Eugene Dalton in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1913, the boy had already been working for nine years as a newsboy and messenger for drug stores and telegraph companies. “He is on the job from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. [17 hours a day] for seven days in the week,” Hine noted, making $15 to $18 per week (the equivalent of about $500 to $600 today). Library of Congress
When a Photographer Turned His Focus on Social Injustice, It Helped Usher in the First Child Labor Laws
In Comanche County, Oklahoma, Hine met Mart Payne, 5, who reportedly picked between 10 and 20 pounds of cotton a day.  Library of Congress
Newspaper boy
George Greentree, 6, told Hine that he sometimes covered his 12-year-old brother’s paper route in Jacksonville, Florida, making $1 each day. “Works the pathos game,” Hines wrote of young George. “Stays out often until midnight. Father dead. Mother janitor in church.”  Library of Congress
Oysters
A group of children shuck oysters in Dunbar, Louisiana. Hines reported: “All but the very smallest babies work. All began at 3:30 a.m., expected to work until 5 p.m.”  Library of Congress
Elvis Family
The Elvis family in Biloxi, Mississippi, worked in the Barataria Canning Company. Hines reported that the youngest boy, a 7-year-old named Jo, worked Saturdays. Mrs. Elvis said that Alma, the 3-year-old by the door, was “learnin’ the trade.”  Library of Congress
doll
A 5-year-old made this doll from waste material; she would play with it in the Newberry, South Carolina, knitting mill where her mother worked.  Library of Congress
Cover image of the Smithsonian Magazine Summer 2026 issue

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This article is a selection from the Summer 2026 issue of Smithsonian magazine

Ted Scheinman is a senior editor for Smithsonian magazine. He is the author of Camp Austen: My Life as an Accidental Jane Austen Superfan.

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