Lewis Hine his camera told the truth

Ask, May/Jun 2004 by Rumford, James

It's 1910 in a Pennsylvania coal mine. A whistle blows. It is calling the workers to go down into the mine. As they enter the mine, they see their friends leaving from working all night. Their faces are black from coal dust.

A photographer named Lewis Hine calls to the night workers. He asks them politely to stand together for a photo. Flash! The dark mine fills with light.

Lewis Hine's photos are published in magazines. These are not pictures of America's mighty workers. These are pictures of children.

Lewis Hine shows these children proud and hardworking. He also shows the terrible place where they work. He hopes that his photographs will make people change the laws that make children from poor families work. These children are not poor because they are stupid or lazy. They are just like other children, like you-but without money, without a future.

It's 1911 in New York City. A mother in a run-down apartment calls her children to the dining room table piled high with bits and pieces of colored cloth. The children will miss school today. The family needs money. The children sit down. Their fingers twist and turn the cloth into flowers for hats.

There's a knock at the door. The mother is afraid it is the police. It is against the law in New York for children to work. But no one has come to enforce the law. It is Lewis Hine instead. He greets everyone. He smiles and talks to the children.

"May I take your picture?" he asks.

Lewis Hine takes many pictures, and these are published, too.

Later that year, Lewis Hine is in Massachusetts. Children are lining up to go into the mill where cotton is made into cloth. The boss throws a switch. The machines begin whirring.

The owners know about Lewis Hine. They have seen how his photographs are stirring up trouble. If people become mad enough, they will make the mill hire adults, who will not work as cheaply as children. Then the owners will have to raise wages. The owners will lose money. They tell their workers not to let Lewis Hine in the mill. Some owners even threaten Lewis Hine's life.

Lewis Hine doesn't care. The children are too important.

Lewis tricks the mill boss. He says he has come to photograph the machinery, not the children. Lewis is let in. Inside it is hot. The air is choked with lint, and the noise of looms and spinning machines is so loud that it hurts his ears.

Lewis Hine photographs the machines and the children. The children's tiny hands move in and out of the moving parts. Lewis Hine does not want to disturb the children as they work. If they do not pay attention, they may lose a finger or an arm in the giant, roaring machines.

It's 1913 in Mississippi. Lewis Hine is waiting for the children to wake up.

"Get up!" the boss yells at the sleepy ones still in their beds. "Get up if you know what's good for you. There's oysters to shuck."

In the cold, dark room, eyes pop open. In a few minutes, with a piece of bread in their hands, the children stumble over to the work shed. Beside their mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, they stand, working all day.

When it is light enough, Lewis Hine sets up his camera. Click! Click! All day long, he photographs the workers as they pry the rough shells open to get at the oyster meat.

In the evening, as the children are on their way back to bed, he wants to take a picture of a little girl. She smiles. Lewis Hine snaps the shutter. Then she asks him to take a picture of her doll, too. Even after hours of working like a grownup, inside she is a little girl.

Later that year, Lewis Hine is in the cotton fields of Texas. Children are stooped over, picking cotton and stuffing it into bags. Lewis takes picture after picture in the intense heat.

"How much cotton do you pick?" he asks a seven-year-old girl named Ruby.

"I works from sun-up to sun-down an picks 35 pounds a day," she says.

To Lewis Hine, Ruby is not like the girl with the doll in Mississippi. Her spirit is broken. The work has made her like a machine. What kind of woman will she become, Lewis wonders.

But the cotton planter and hundreds of people like him who own the fields, the factories, and the coal mines of America don't care about children like Ruby. They care only about money.

When people see Lewis Hine's photographs, they are shocked. They had no idea that children were slaving away for a few cents a day. Some are so angry that they demand that the U.S. Congress take action. In 1916, in part because of Lewis Hine's photographs, Congress outlaws child labor in every state. But the victory does not last. In 1918, the Supreme Court says that it is against the Constitution for Congress to tell the states what to do.

Lewis Hine was a gentle man. He cared about children. He used his camera to change America. Finally, he succeeded. In 1938, just two years before his death, Congress was able to pass a new law that made it illegal for children to work like adults. This is still the law today.

When we look at Lewis Hine's photographs now, we see the faces of the grandparents of our grandparents. In a way, we also see ourselves, for we are the future Lewis Hine wanted so much to protect.