Kids At Work-Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor Author: Freeman, Russell

This book focuses on the efforts of Lewis Hines, an investigative photographer for the Naional Child Labor Committee, to document the abuse of underage workers in various fields of work such as the seafood industry, coal mines, cotton mills, etc. He believed that if people could see his photographs, that they would demand changes in the laws to end this abuse.

I first chose this book because of the cover (photographs of young children working) and the subject matter. When I first picked this book up and quickly flipped through it, I thought it would take very little time to read because it had so many full page photographs. However, I found that the photographs had the opposite effect on me. I spent more time examining the photographs and thinking about what their lives must have been like than I spent on the actual text. I was drawn to each little face in the photographs. I looked at the children's eyes, which stood out due to the dirt and grime all over their faces. Even though some of the children smiled as they posed for the photographs, there was a seriousness beyond their years expressed in the eyes. I thought about how these poor little children were robbed of their childhoods. I thought about how their little bodies must have ached at night as they crawled into bed and every morning as they dragged their little worn bodies out of bed.

This book really affected me emotionally. I guess part of it was because I could relate it so much to my own family. There are not many photos of my mother's family, but the ones that do exist show the same bare feet, tattered clothing, and serious faces that I saw in the photographs of Lewis Hine. My mother grew up as a sharecropper's child, and she worked in the cotton fields of Mississippi from the time she was big enough to pull a cotton sack around. She told me stories of pulling heavy cotton sacks around until she and her brothers had hemorrhoids. She also talked about going to bed hungry at night when there wasn't enough food. Going to school was considered a luxury. My husband's family background is pretty much the same. His daddy had to quit school in the sixth grade to work in the fields. He talked about having no shoes to wear in the winter when snow was on the ground. Needless to say, both of our parents were very proud when my husband and I were the first on the entire family trees to be able to attend college.

I recommend reading this book to get a sense of how far our society has come. It also gives you a renewed appreciation of being able to get an education. This book also demonstrates the power of photography and its effect on social change. A picture really is worth a thousand words.