Child Labor

Lewis Hine (1874-1940)
Child Labor in the
Cotton Mills of Mississippi,
April-May 1911
Typescript report
Manuscript Division

Edward F. Brown
Child Labor in the Gulf Coast
National Child Labor Committee
Page 2
Carbon typescript copy, 1913
Manuscript Division
Gift of the National Child Labor Committee,
1954 (55.4a,b)

The National Child Labor Committee campaigned for tougher state and federal laws against the abuses of industrial child labor, and Lewis Hine was its greatest publicist. A teacher who left his profession to work full-time as investigator for the committee, Hine prepared a number of the Committee's reports and took some of the most powerful images in the history of documentary photography. The Library holds the papers of the Committee, including the reports, field notes, correspondence, and over 5,000 of Hine's photographs and negatives. This album depicts children at work in canneries and is accompanied by a follow-up report for a group of canneries previously investigated by Hine.

Interior of Magnolia (Miss.)
Cotton Mills and Spinning Room
Image 2

Lewis Hine (1874-1940)
Group of Workers in Clayton, N.C. Cotton Mills,
October 1912
Image 2
Photographic album
Prints & Photographs Division
Gift of the National Child Labor Committee, 1954 (55B.13, 55B.14)