Emotional Portrait Photos of American Child Laborers in the 1900s-10s

These are 27 emotional portrait photos of American child laborers taken by photographer Lewis Wickes Hine in the 1900s and 1910s.

5-year old picking cotton, Comanche County, Oklahoma, 1916

5-year-old after day's work, was tired and refused to be photographed, Biloxi, Mississippi, 1911

11-year-old girl picking cotton, Oklahoma, 1916

14-year-old boy has been working in cotton mills for 6 years, Cuero, Texas, 1913

15-year-old messenger boy working for Mackay Telegraph Company, Waco, Texas, 1913

A little spinner in a Georgia cotton mill, 1909

A little spinner in the Mollohan Mills, Newberry, South Carolina, December 3, 1908

A sleeping newsboy found after midnight in the vestibule of a railroad station, newspapers for a pillow, 1912

A young driver in the Brown Mine, Brown, West Virginia, 1910

Boy stands next the machines that he has been working at for some months at the Avondale Mills, Birmingham, Alabama, November 1910

Boys after working, Birmingham, Alabama, 1910

Boys climb up on the spinning frame to mend the broken threads and put back the empty bobbins, Macon, Georgia,
19 january 1909

Boys working in Ewen Breaker of Pennsylvania Coal Co., South Pittston, January 1911

Breaker boys, Hughestown Borough, Pennsylvania, 1911

Children at Whitman Street dump, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, 1912

Coal breakers in break-time, Pennsylvania, 1911

Coal breakers, South Pittston, Pennsylvania, January 1911

Delivery boy for Kutterer Printing Co., St. Louis, 1910

Delivery boy in New York, ca. 1910s

Eight-year-old boy driving horse rake, Western Massachusetts, 1915

Infants working in Avondale Mills, Birmingham, Alabama, 1910

Midnight at glass works, Indiana, 1908

Newsies at Skeeter's Branch, St. Louis, Missouri, May 9, 1910

Newsies smoking at Skeeter's Branch, St. Louis, Missouri, May 9, 1910

Sweeper and doffer boys in Lancaster Cotton Mill, Lancaster, South Carolina, 1908

Two of the pin boys working in Bowling Academy, Burlington, Vermont, 1910

Young boy stands on the machine that he has been working for 3 months, Chicopee, Massachusett, 1911

(Photos from Photo Tractatus)