Visual Source 17.4: Inside the Factory: Lewis Hine, Child Labor, 1912

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Visual Source 17.4 presents a sharply contrasting image of factory life in this colorized photograph of women and children at work in a vegetable cannery in Baltimore in 1912. It was taken by Lewis W. Hine (1874–1940), a prominent American photographer who spent much of his professional life documenting child labor and factory working life. Often Hine briefly interviewed the children he photographed. When he asked one young girl her age, she replied: “I don’t remember. I’m not old enough to work, but do just the same.” A twelve-year-old illiterate boy told Hine: “Yes I want to learn, but can’t when I work all the time.”35 Hine’s photographs played a role in the passage of child labor laws in the United States.

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Visual Source 17.4 Inside the Factory: Lewis Hine, Child Labor, 1912 (Oil over photograph, 1912, by Lewis W. Hine. The Granger Collection, New York)
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