This is the last post (at leasts for now!) about the work of Lewis Wickes Hine.

We’ve looked at the various conditions where the children were working and you could tell when Hine believed the conditions to be deplorable–though possibly essential to the families’ survival.

That is not the case here. In these photographs, Hine’s rage was out full-force, and it was directed at the parents and caretakers. No comments from me on these photos, as Hine said all that needs to be said, eloquently.

 

 Nov 1914. A menace to Society. The Padgett family. The entire family including the mother totally illiterate. No one could read or write. The mother does mill work some. Alice, 17 years has steady job. Makes from $5 to $6 a week. Alfred, 13 years now, worked here when he was 12, and in other mills before that. Makes $4 a week. Recently crippled by getting his hand caught in the cogs of a spinning machine. Richard just reached 11. Been working here 1 year; began when he was 10. Makes $2.40 a week. “The work runs him down too.” William, 6 years old, nearly blind. Lizzie, 5 years old.

Home in utter neglect; filthy and bare. When investigator called the mother had been gone about an hour, leaving a roomer’s 3 months old baby in the cradle before an open fire on the hearth, and only two children 5 and 6 years old – one nearly blind, playing around. She came back and fed them a lot of cheap candy. What will Society reap from its neglect of this family? Shaw Cotton Mills. Location: South Weldon, North Carolina.

 

October 6, 1921. The “East Side” of Pocahontas Country. The Aldrich home, – Buckeye, near Marlinton, W. Va. This is one of the worst homes in the county. Note the duck-coop, made out of an old trunk, – in front yard.

Mother said “The colt kicked the winders out.” She is a no-‘count mountaineer from Kentucky and her husband is a shiftless farmer who has let this farm run down to worthlessness. His father ran a prosperous farm here and owned hundreds of acres but the son has run thro[ugh] it all. Typical of worst conditions in the country. Oct. 6, 1921. Location: Pocahontas County–Marlinton, West Virginia / Photo by L.W. Hine.

Sometime, I’d like to cover his photographs from the Great War and from Ellis Island, which are excellent and very different in tone and content.  But that is for a future post!