This photo was found under a collection called National Child Labor Committee Collection. The photo was taken by Louis Wickes Hine 1916 who published over 5,000 photos depicting child labor. This 16 year old child whose name was Louis Pelissier was mentally challenged and didn’t know where he was supposed to work so he made his way to a mill and they couldn’t help him. He was a sweeper but the work was too hard for him.
This picture represents the horror of labor in general and how bad workers had it in the 1900s. There were no rights or exceptions made for even mentally disabled children.
We have accomplished milestones from then to now.
First of all I don’t know how factory owners had the heart to exploit children and throw them into these work areas, were they were nowhere near sanitary, for so many hours. Most especially mentally disabled children. I could just imagine to what extremes this got.
I think child labor is only a history for the U.S., but in some countries it still exists. I heard that buying knock off product is illegal but it also support a child labor.
In my opinion, logically, child labors were forced engaged in manual entry jobs such as sweeper and workers in undesirable condition factories. Why did this boy wear formally? Did the photographer want to make an ironical impact? I mean that the photographer might want to satirize the capitalism greedy.
I think all countries have this kind of history due to lack of labor forces in the period of developing countries. I just thank god to live in this period of time, the 21st centry, within the constitution and freedom of human rights. The U.S society has much better condition than the last decades even though still having social problems.