Two of the Youngest Workers, photograph by Lewis Hine, Lewiston, Maine, April 1909. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Two of the Youngest Workers, photograph by Lewis Hine, Lewiston, Maine, April 1909. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Child labor robbed children of their youth. When Lewis Hine took this photograph, these two boys had already worked for the Bates Mill in Lewiston for eight years. Their lives were little different than those of their adult coworkers. They worked similar hours, but held different jobs with lower pay. Even so, parents, and sometimes children who did not want to go to school, resisted changes in child labor laws.