Photos That Helped End Child Labor in the U.S.

motherjones.com

19 points·walterbell··6 comments

This article manages to skip my personal favorite Hines photo: http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/hine-whi...

The direct gazes of some of these children really affected me. Seeing children only a little older than my own, working hunched over in filthy conditions, is quite horrifying. How many lives were stunted early by this kind of labour?

And toward the end of the article is a photo [1] of Shorpy Higginbotham, whose name was used for an interesting historical photos site [2]. There are three photos of Shorpy in existence [3], staring back at us from 100+ years ago, and a few details of his short life.

[1] http://www.motherjones.com/files/15_01099v.jpg

[2] http://www.shorpy.com

[3] http://www.shorpy.com/shorpy

If it helped to end child labour, then why child labour is still present? http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27350413 https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/09/17/child-laborers-america-2...

There are age exceptions for agriculture, where kids as young as 12 are permitted to work as long as they have written permission from their parents.

I assume these exceptions exist because of an historical limited labor pool during critical time periods for farmers, such as harvest. For example detasseling corn is a common summer job for teenagers in the Midwest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detasseling

Here are more details on the rules: http://webapps.dol.gov/elaws/whd/flsa/docs/hours.asp

Photography is an avenue that people take when words are not enough to express the inequity. Child labor may still be present but it has some time to go before it can be fully stopped in its tracks.

My grandfather and great granfather worked in those mines,puts my morning back in perspective.

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