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Mark Daniel Hatz Project 3 Final: Case Study 23 May 2013 Professor D. Comer

The Child Labor Problem – Visually Speaking

"If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera." -- Lewis Wickes Hine

Some of the most persuasive rhetoric opposing Example One child labor during the early twentieth century was neither verbal nor written, it was visual. This “visual rhetoric” was instrumental in the passage of the Fair Labor and Standards

Act with its child labor provisions.[1] One of the foremost visual storytellers of the time was Lewis Wickes Hine.

Newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane said to the Syracuse Advertising Men's Club, in March 1911,

"Use a picture. It's worth a thousand words."[2] He could have been speaking about Lewis Hine, whose images were already speaking volumes by then.

Lewis Hine was born in Wisconsin in 1874, he studied sociology at the University of

Chicago, and , becoming a teacher at the Ethical

Culture School in New York.[3] Lewis left his position with the school in 1908 when he was hired as a photographer by the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). Years later, Owen

Lovejoy, the northern regional leader of the NCLC, wrote to Mr. Hine stating, "In my judgment the work you did under my direction for the National Child Labor Committee was more responsible than any or all other efforts to bring the facts and conditions of child employment to public attention."[4] Mr. Lovejoy was acknowledging the visual medium of photography as Hatz 2 evidence and the power of a visual image to persuade, inform, and move people when words alone had proven inadequate

Lewis Hine was creating the rules and procedures of Documentary Photography as he took thousands of images to influence change in the child labor movement. Rules we still consider essential in today’s much more visual times. Foremost is that the image must be a true representation. Lewis was adamant that his photographs never be altered and that they remain “A reproduction of impressions made upon the photographer which he desires to repeat to others.”[5]

Lewis has been accused of posing the subjects in his photographs, which he did.[6] However never to make the conditions seem worse instead he strived to show the children as human, as worthy of intervention on their behalf and not merely as wasted lives.

His subjects were often photographed “full frontal” and infrequently performing work, part of this was the limitations of photography at the time. Long shutter times were required and to show the subject in sharp detail required that he stop any movement. [7] He appears to have made them feel at ease, to have made them comfortable with the man taking the picture. The focus was always on the children and not the circumstances, which he felt, were obvious. The photographs were frequently taken at eye level, which meant he had to get down to their level to get the image. Lewis used a short depth of field to blur the background and make the child the

Example Two primary focus. Lewis managed to make the public care. Even today,

his images show us faces that we imagine we might know, we have

known, or we would like to know. His child laborers are children

worth saving.

Laura Petty (pictured on left) stands alone in a strawberry

field where she picks berries for two cents a box. Vicki Goldberg, Hatz 3

Photographic critic for in her book Lewis W. Hine, Children at Work wrote about Laura, "A six-year-old berry picker flirts outrageously with the man who will immortalize her."[8] Notice her smile, hands on hips, the bow in her hair. The child is not posed to exaggerate the horrors of child labor; she was posed to express her humanity, if she was posed at all. I have seen this stance on my own children and I am sure that the public could visualize their children standing and smiling the same way, however their children’s clothes were clean, they had shoes, and their bows were tight. How different could their own children be from this little girl? This photograph first makes you want to smile, it then makes you want to get that child out of the field and into clean clothes. Images like this were effective because they showed the young laborers as children with potential and not already lost to society.

Then Colonel Theodore Roosevelt said, "Remember, that the human being is the most important of all product to turn out. … If you do not have the right kind of citizens in the future, you cannot make any use of the natural resources … the greatest duty of this generation is to see to it that the next generation is of the proper kind to continue the work of this nation."[9] Lewis showed the potential of the children he photographed to be the “proper kind of citizens” if given the right kind of opportunity.

Charlie Foster (pictured on the right) is a ten-year-old Example Three laborer on his way to work in the Merrimack Mills in Huntsville,

Alabama. What mother would not want to help this innocent looking child have a better life? Lewis showed his genius by not constantly showing their abysmal existence but instead showing children with unfulfilled potential, children much like their own.

Lewis Wickes Hine was an expert photographer who had Hatz 4 a proficient understanding of the human spirit. He understood that to move the masses to his cause, he had to personalize the experience. Lewis knew that if the public could identify with the children, they would demand help for them. Influential citizens would demand that these child laborers be given the opportunity to develop into the “proper kind of citizens” Theodore

Roosevelt wrote about.[9]

Lewis was adept in the technical skills required to produce a proper image. He acquired this expertise over time and the skills came with practice. The limitations of the equipment in his day did not allow for the kind of “deliberate practice” extoled by Daniel Coyle, where a person gets quick feedback from his mistakes and can try again until getting it right.[10] Lewis might not have a second chance and the image would be lost forever. He perfected his art through a review process taking place sometime after he took the photograph then developed and printed it. If he made a mistake, he had to consider the camera settings and conditions and deduce what might have gone wrong. Using this process he educated himself and learned how not to make the same error again. His ability to take photographs that would induce desired responses from the public is harder to describe. Of course, his studies in sociology would have given him the educational requirements but he also had a deep personal belief in what he was doing.

Lewis never made much money and later in life, being unable to pay his mortgage, he lost his home and had to apply for welfare. After his death, his son offered his father’s photographs to the but they declined to take them. Lucky for us the

George Eastman House was not so dismissive of his great work. [11]

Lewis Wickes Hines was instrumental in making the case for child labor reform, his photographs awakened the national conscious in a way that words had not. His expertise helped establish the concept of Documentary Photography and his honest depictions and methods Hatz 5 helped establish rules still followed today when photographs are used in journalism or for other documentary purposes.

If “the pen is mightier than the sword,” Lewis Hine showed us the photograph is mightier than a shield of ignorance. Lewis was not the first person to use photographs to expose abhorrent situations; however he was one of the best. He helped establish the photograph as visual rhetoric and using them, he spoke volumes.

"There were two things I wanted to do. I wanted to show the things that had to be corrected; I wanted to show the things that had to be appreciated." -- Lewis Wickes Hine

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Works Cited

1. Parry-Giles, Shawn J., and J. Michael Hogan. "Studying Visual Modes of Public Address: Lewis Hine's Progressive-Era Child Labor Rhetoric." The Handbook of Rhetoric and Public Address. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. 251. Print.

2. Gardner, Walter, E., ed. "Speakers Give Sound Advice." Syracuse Post Standard 28 Mar. 1911: 18. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 26 July 2012. Web. 08 May 2013.

3. Smith-Shank, Deborah L. "Lewis Hine and His Photo Stories: Visual Culture and Social Reform." Art Education, Vol. 56, No. 2, Why Not Visual Culture? Mar. 2003: 33-37. JSTOR. ITHAKA. Web. 09 May 2013

4. Parry-Giles, Shawn J., and J. Michael Hogan. "Lewis Hine's Progressive-Era Child Labor Rhetoric." The Handbook of Rhetoric and Public Address. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. 250-265. Print.

5. Hine, Lewis W. "The Silhouette in Photography." The Photographic Times. Vol. 38, New York, USA: The Photographic Times Publishing Association. 1906. 488. Print.

6. "Lewis Wickes Hine Technique." Notes On Photographs. George Eastman House, 12 Mar. 2009. Web. 02 May 2013.

7. "Teaching With Documents: Photographs of Lewis Hine: Documentation of Child Labor."National Archives and Records Administration. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, n.d. Web. 10 May 2013.

8. Goldberg, Vicki. Lewis W. Hine Children at Work. Munich: Prestel, 1999. Print.

9. Roosevelt, Theodore. The Conservation of Childhood. New York: National Child Labor Committee, 1911. 8. Print.

10. Coyle, Daniel. "The Sweet Spot." The Talent Code. Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. New York: Bantam, 2009, Print.

11. Goldberg, Vicki. "The New Season/Photography: Critic’s Choice; A Career That Moved From Man to Machine." New York Times 13 Sept. 1998, Arts sec. Print.

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Example One

Title: Some of the young workers in the Anniston Mfg. Co. Location: Anniston, Alabama.

Creator(s): Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940, photographer

Date Created/Published: 1914 October.

Medium: 1 photographic print.

Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-nclc-02923 (color digital file from b&w original print)

Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.

Call Number: LOT 7479, v. 6, no. 3808 [P&P]

Repository: Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 Hatz 8

Example Two

Title: Laura Petty, a 6 year old berry picker on Jenkins farm, Rock Creek near Baltimore, Md. "I'm just beginnin'. Picked two boxes yesterday. (2 cents a box). (See my report July 10, 1909.) July 8, 1909. Location: Baltimore, Maryland.

Creator(s): Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940, photographer

Date Created/Published: 1909 July 8.

Medium: 1 photographic print.

Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-nclc-00003 (color digital file from b&w original print) LC-

USZ6-1197 (b&w film copy negative)

Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.

Call Number: LOT 7475, v. 1, no. 0829 [P&P]

Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20504

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Example Three

Title: Charlie Foster has a steady job in the Merrimack Mills. School Record says he is now ten years old. His father told me that he could not read, and still he is putting him into the mill. See Hine report. Location: Huntsville, Alabama.

Creator(s): Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940, photographer

Date Created/Published: 1913 December.

Medium: 1 photographic print.

Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-nclc-02901 (color digital file from b&w original print)

Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.

Call Number: LOT 7479, v. 6, no. 3729 [P&P]

Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540