Why did they hire children?The Amoskeag Manufacturing Company

hired children because they were cheap,

worked hard, and could do some jobs that

adults couldn't do.

Long Hours and Dangerous WorkThe Industrial Revolution was a time of

few government regulations on working

conditions and hours. Children often had

to work under very dangerous

conditions. They lost limbs or fingers

working on high powered machinery

with little training. Sometimes they

worked around dangerous chemicals

where they became sick from the fumes.

Did a lot of children work?Child labor was a common practice

throughout much of the Industrial

Revolution. Estimates show that over

50% of the workers in some factories in

the early 1800s were under the age of 14.

In the United States, there were over

750,000 children under the age of 15

working in 1870.

Facts about child

labor in the millyard

Lewis Hine 1874-1940In 1908 Lewis Hine became the photographer for the National Child Labor

Committee (NCLC), leaving his teaching position. Over the next decade,

Hine documented child labor, to help the NCLC's efforts to end child labor.

In 1913, he documented child laborers among cotton mill workers to

show the public just how dangerous these child's lives were. As a

photographer, he was frequently threatened with violence or even death by

factory police and foremen. At the time, the dangers and injuries of

A famous Lewis Hine photo taken

in the Amoskeag millyard in 1909.Fred Normandin (boy in overalls) was a doffer at the AMC.

child labor was meant to be hidden from the public. Photography was not only prohibited

(forbidden) but also posed a serious threat to the industry. To gain entry to the mills, mines

and factories, Lewis was forced to use many disguises. At times he pretended to be  a fire

inspector, postcard vendor, bible salesman, or even an industrial photographer making a

record of factory machinery. The work of Lewis Hine and others like him put an end to the

mistreatment of child laborers in the mills.

Lewis Hine's photographs supported the NCLC's work to end child labor and in 1912

the Children's Bureau was created. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 eventually brought

child labor in the US to an end.

Children as young as 9 worked in the mills. Lewis Hine and many others

really wanted to change this. Lets see if you can find all of these words that

pertain to child labor.