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Re-Reading Lewis Hine's Child-Labour Photographs'

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Re-Reading Lewis Hine's Child-Labour Photographs' Children of the Mills: Re-Reading Lewis Hine's Child-Labour Photographs' GEORGE DIMOCK There is then, in Hine's earlywork, an implicitcounter- in the United States: textile mills, coal mines, glass- statement to the Progressivereformist ideology he - works, commercial agriculture and the street trades. embraced a subtle but nonethelessdistinct resistance At the same time that Hine's work define the to helped the tendency of reformersto make objects of their interests and of underclass'cases.' values, agendas Progressive reform, it was determined them. The movement Alan Trachtenberg2 largely by comprised a flexible and changing set of alliances at the local, state and national levels, among teachers, suffragists, health-care workers, civil servants, city Reform Photography as Dominant planners, social workers, labour leaders, journalists Ideology and reform politicians. These members of an emergent, professional-managerialclass advocated a Alan Trachtenberg and Maren Stange have new style of reform.4 They sought to minister presented theoretically informed, historical argu- scientifically and bureaucraticallyto the body politic ments for Lewis Hine's child-labour photographs as in response to the systemic ills wrought by corporate manifestations of 'a shared social consciousness' capitalism, including child labour. between the photographer and his subjects.3These Progressivism reached floodtide around 1912 readings appeal greatly in that they locate in the before losing ground to the more entrenched forces work a self-reflexive critique of the Progressives' of the dominant social order. Its failure to take tendency to regard those they sought to help as deeper root can be ascribed, at least in part, to the inferior. Against the current critical consensus that distance between the Progressives' professional Hine's pictures do justice to their subjects, I will elitism and the low class status of those whose lives argue that they depict working children and their they sought to change. By the time of the First World parents as aberrant in relation to a valorized middle- War, the reformers had lost initiative in a trans- class norm. The fight over child labour was not formed pro-business environment. Those who exclusively about bringing an end to an egregious remained committed to the Progressive program aspect of capitalist exploitation. It also entailed far- fought to hold onto the gains of the preceding reaching struggles over who children were, what decade. While Progressive reform significantly their roles in the family were to be, how they were to influenced the political and social landscape of the be valued and cared for, and who had the power to United States at the turn of the century, its regulate them. As a body of work, the child-labour limitations were also profound. Robert Wiebe photographs constitute a seminally influential summarized the central failing of the reformers in instance of social documentary. My intent is not to the following terms: Hine for not to the class castigate conforming had carriedan consciousness of the cultural moment. But I They approachrather than a solutionto present their labours, and in the end constructed an do wish to counter the notion that this work fulfils they just approachto reform,mistaking it for a finishedproduct.5 the contemporary critical desire for a photographic practice that bridges class conflict. The fact that The tendency has been to read Hine's child- Hine worked to represent and to oppose the labour photographs against, rather than within, the economic of exploitation children does not support shortcomings of Progressive reform's political pro- the claim that his photographic practice was exem- gram and affiliations.6In the following pages, I will with plary respect to his working-class subjects. be interpreting, in some detail, several of his photo- Lewis Hine for photographed the National Child graphs of children working in the textile industry Labor Committee (NCLC) between 1906 and 1918. with the aim of taking class more fully into account. This remains his best known and most celebrated Along the way, I will be re-reading two turn-of-the- work. Within a social history of the Progressive century photographic genres, pictorialism and social Reform Movement which rose to prominence in the documentary, as contemporary, mutually re- first decade of the twentieth century, the child- inforcing cultural codes aligned together on the labour photographs served as visual, empirical privileged side of the social divide separating an evidence of the widespread employment of children ascendant middle class from a growing and increas- in a variety of industrial and commercial enterprises ingly problematic, industrial proletariat. THEOXFORD ART JOURNAL - 16:2 1993 37 In drawing distinctions between pictorialism and which he says, 'The ideal of oppression was realized by documentary photography, photographic historians this dismal servitude. When they find themselves in such have tended to the extent to which Hine's conditionat the dawn of existence- so young, so feeble, ignore - early career unselfconsciously operated on both struggling among men what passes in these souls fresh sides of the line art from from God?' [...] With a picture thus sympathetically dividing separating high what a leverwe havefor the social social reform.7In June 1909, Hine delivered a talk to interpreted, uplift.10 a national conference of social workers. Entitled 'Social How the Camera in In aligning CarolinaSpinner with Victor Hugo, Hine Photography, May Help trades on a well-established tradition the Social Uplift,' it contains, in embryonic form, all literary the and confusions connected wherein the mill child functions as a symbol of the problems, possibilities of industrial On the last of with his project of documenting working-class iniquity capitalism. page children both as a mode of artistic and as MadameBovary, for example, Flaubert signals the expression devastation left in the wake of his heroine's suicide in part of a political reform movement to abolish child labour.8 In the course of his Hine the fate of her only child, Berthe, who is sent 'to a presentation, cotton-mill to earn a in the form of a slide, his living.'11 projected, stereopticon Hine's talk entertains a number of photograph representing a young girl tending a row striking of machines in the Lancaster Cotton Mills contradictory rationales for his photographic prac- spinning tice. He his of chil- in South Carolina on November 30, 1908 1). begins by discussing photographs (Fig. dren in the street trades as of in Hine's presentation attempts to persuade his examples 'publicity that this constitutes a our appeal for public sympathy.' He proceeds by colleagues picture complex in relation to commercial sign in no way limited to its most obvious function as endorsing photography as a to the influ- empirical evidence for the existence of child labour: advertising way promote visibility, ence, and reputation of the social worker. He Take the photographof a tiny spinner in a Carolina demonstrates his awareness of Carolina Spinner's cotton-mill.As it is, it makesan appeal.Reinforce it with semiotic status as a sign distinct from its referent one of those social pen-picturesof [Victor]Hugo's in when he acknowledges that the photograph 'is often uiIIr. n 4 r Fig. 1. Lewis Hine: 'CarolinaSpinner' 1908(IMP/GEH 77:181:15). - 38 THE OXFORDART JOURNAL 16:2 1993 more effective than the reality would have been, empirical fact, romantic symbol, sociological type, because, in the picture, the non-essential and con- moral indictment and aesthetic transfiguration. As flicting interests have been eliminated.' Hine given in the title of his talk, however, Hine's intent endorses the child-labour photograph as legally was to demonstrate to his peers 'how the camera compelling evidence even as he acknowledges may help in the social uplift.' The various, conflict- photographic transparency as a powerful myth ing interpretations of CarolinaSpinner cohere when capable of ideological manipulation: 'Of course, you we come to understand the image as an adaptable, and I know that this unbounded faith in the integrity rhetorical device to be deployed in the interests of of the photograph is often rudely shaken, for, while Progressivereform. photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.' One particularly striking instance of Hine's Hine suggests using photographs to make his willingness to comingle styles in the interests of rhe- audience 'so sick and tired of the whole business that torical persuasion comes in the form of his when the time for action comes, child-labor pictures fashioning from the same negative two radically will be records of the past.' Here the relations differentpictures whose styles separate out on oppo- between photography and social reform become site sides of the fine art/social documentary divide incoherent at the level of both temporality and (Figs. 2 & 3). A photograph captioned 'social worker causality. If Hine means to say that child-labour visits poor home (defective child)' shows a young, photographs will prove so distressing that they will impoverished, immigrant mother seated in her tene- galvanize the body politic into changing the existing ment kitchen holding a small child on her lap.14A conditions of industrial employment and thereby well-dressed, middle-class social worker stands over render the images obsolete, he, nevertheless, her in what appears to be an uncomfortably close, articulates a much more complex position which artificiallyposed attitude. The two women exchange includes a break between 'the time for action' and gazes. The needy mother looks up as if appealing for the time of representation, the latter seeming to both help and guidance. The social worker benignly anticipate and post-date the moment of reform dominates the scene from her superior, supervisory proper. Hine's lack of clarity may have something to position. The little boy stares off to the left, lost in a do with the psychic contradictions entailed in invok- world of his own.
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