Reporting on Labor Conditions
Lewis Hine was one of several investigators working for the National Child Labor Committee who prepared reports on labor conditions and their impact on the lives of workers, generally concentrating on a particular industry or region.
The NCLC records in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division contain approximately 65 reports, about 30 of which were authored by Hine. Hine inserted into his reports references to the photo numbers of images that illustrate his points. Frequently, photo captions make note of an associated report.
The reports and the images to which they refer were apparently physically separate at the NCLC. The organization kept the majority of the photos in albums organized by industry, although scattered duplicate photos are occasionally found filed with the typescript reports, which consist of anywhere from two to fifty pages. Because of the divergent housing requirements of the materials, that separation has continued at the Library of Congress. In order to demonstrate the relationship of the two types of documentation, however, members of Prints and Photographs Division and Manuscript Division staffs collaborated to digitize a sample report and inserted links to the referenced images, when they are available.
The digitized report is in PDF format. Links to images appear with a blue outline.
View report: "Child Labor in the Canning Industry of Maryland," July 1909, by Lewis Hine. (PDF, 1.97KB)