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https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/files/original/c1fe0c9af2e07ff485f28b8943eaa640.png
56c6c8f79354cdb551417d6f6fc79920
Dublin Core
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Title
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Children Working in a Shrimp Cannery (1911)
Subject
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Work
Date
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February 1911
Coverage
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Industrialization and Expansion (1877-1913)
Primary
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Primary
Description
An account of the resource
This 1911 photograph depicts workers, including two young children, picking shrimp in a cannery in Biloxi, Mississippi. Shrimp canneries often employed entire families, many of them immigrants, who worked peeling, cleaning, and cooking shrimp that was then packaged to be sold to American consumers. The photographer, Lewis Hine, was a sociologist and muckraker (an investigative journalist who exposed sources of corruption in various American institutions). Hine used photography to reveal problems within American labor systems; much of his photography highlighted the work being done by children. Hine's caption for this image said "Eight-year-old Max, one of the young shrimp pickers in the Dunbar, Lopez, Dukate Company. Only a small force was working that day." In 1908, Hine became the photographer for the National Child Labor Committee, a organization dedicated to protecting child laborers and raising awareness about the conditions in which many worked. Eventually, his photographs played a critical role in the passage of child labor laws in the United States.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Hine, Lewis Wickes, "Eight-year-old Max, one of the young shrimp pickers in the Dunbar, Lopez, Dukate Company. Only a small force was working that day. Location: Biloxi, Mississippi," 1911. Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/nclc.00843/.
Relation
A related resource
2037
Child Labor
Mississippi
Work
-
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
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I am twenty-three years old. I was married in Mazatlan when I was seventeen. My husband was an employee of a business house in the port but he treated me very badly and even my own mother advised me to get a divorce. A short time after I was divorced my father died. Then my mother, my two sisters and I decided to come to the United States. As we had been told that there were good opportunities for earning money in Los Angeles, working as extras in the movies and in other ways, we sold our belongings and with the little our father had left us we came to this place, entering first at Nogales, Arizona. From the time we entered I noticed a change in everything, in customs, and so forth, but I believed that I would soon become acclimated and be able to adjust myself to these customs. When we got to Los Angeles we rented a furnished apartment and there my mother took charge of fixing everything up for us. My sisters and I decided to look for work at once. One of my sisters, the oldest, who knew how to sew well, found work at once in the house of a Mexican woman doing sewing. My mother then decided that my youngest sister had better go to school and that I should also work in order to help out with the household expenses and with the education of my sister. As I didn’t even know how to sew or anything and as I don’t know English I found it hard to find work, much as I looked. As we had to earn something, a girl friend of mine, also a Mexican, from Sonora, advised me to go to a dance-hall. After consulting with my mother and my sisters I decided to come and work here every night dancing. My work consists of dancing as much as I can with everyone who comes. At the beginning I didn’t like this work because I had to dance with anyone, but I have finally gotten used to it and now I don’t care, because I do it in order to earn my living. Generally I manage to make from $20.00 to $30.00 a week, for we get half of what is charged for each dance. Each dance is worth ten cents so that if I dance, for example, fifty dances in a night I earn $2.50. Since the dances are short, ten cents being charged for just going around the ball-room, one can dance as many as a hundred. It all depends on how many men come who want to dance. Besides there are some who will give you a present of a dollar or two. This work is what suits me best for I don’t need to know any English here. It is true at times I get a desire to look for another job, because I get very tired. One has to come at 7:30 in the evening and one goes at 12:30, and sometimes at 1 in the morning. One leaves almost dead on Saturdays because many Mexican people come from the nearby towns and they dance and dance with one all night. In Mexico this work might perhaps not be considered respectable, but I don’t lose anything here by doing it. It is true that some men make propositions to me which are insulting, but everything is fixed by just telling them no. If they insist one can have them taken out of the hall by the police. One man whom I liked a lot here in the hall deceived me once. He was a Mexican. But since that time it hasn’t happened to me again. My mother takes a lot of care of me so that I won’t make any bad steps. My sisters do the same.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview.
Manuel Gamio
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed.
Elisa Silva
Dublin Core
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Title
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A Mexican Immigrant Describes Her Work in Los Angeles
Subject
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Immigration and Migration
Gender and Sexuality
Work
Description
An account of the resource
Elisa Silva was born in Mazatlán, Mexico and emigrated to the United States at age twenty, eventually settling in Los Angeles. In this interview, conducted during the mid-1920s, Silva describes her motivation for coming, her difficulties finding work, and the job she eventually obtained at a dance hall.
Creator
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Manuel Gamio
Source
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Elisa Silva, interview by Manuel Gamio, in Manuel Gamio, <em>The Mexican Immigrant: His Life-Story</em> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931), 159-162.
Coverage
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Modern America (1914-1929)
Relation
A related resource
2581
Mexican Immigration
Work
-
Article/Essay
Text
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<p>Beginning in the second half of the 19<sup>th</sup> century, Cubans and Puerto Ricans both fought for their independence from Spain. During this period (1868-1898) many of the most politically active revolutionaries sought (or were forced into) exile in the United States. Cubans and Puerto Ricans saw the United States as a beacon and model for democracy, and a potential source of aid in their countries’ struggles for independence. This first wave of Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants, mainly upper-middle class intellectuals, lobbied the U.S. for support to oust the Spanish, and after their successful expulsion hoped that the U.S. would leave the islands to their own democratic devices. Ultimately, the U.S. betrayed the Cubans and Puerto Ricans by engaging directly in a war with Spain (1898) and then taking control of its colonies rather than fostering their independence. Puerto Rico became a possession of the U.S. and Cuba, while granted its independence, remained under close U.S. supervision under the Platt Amendment of 1903. The amendment gave the U.S. the right to intervene at any time in Cuban domestic affairs, and the land rights for a U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Cuba and Puerto Rico’s intertwined fates as new American possessions fostered solidarity between the two exile communities, and led the Puerto Rican poet Lola RodrÃguez de Tió to exclaim that Cuba and Puerto Rico were “the two wings of the same bird†(<em>de un </em><em>pájaro</em><em> las dos alas</em>).</p>
<p>Over the next 15 years, Cuban immigration and Puerto Rican migration expanded to include not only the middle and upper classes but the working class as well. Despite, or perhaps because of their homelands’ new status as U.S. colonies, Cubans and Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. made significant efforts to preserve their cultural heritage, including their work routines and rhythms. In this regard, the nature, as well as the schedule and customs of work remained practically unchanged, especially in the cigar factories of Key West and Ybor City, Florida. <em>Lectores</em>, or factory readers, were a fixture in the cigar factories of both Florida and New York City. The reader played an important role in disseminating news (especially news from home), progressive ideologies (such as unionism, socialism, etc.) and literature to his largely illiterate listeners, and helped to make cigar makers the most enlightened members of their class (often to the chagrin of the factory owners). Outside of work, immigrant communities established <em>mutualistas </em>(mutual aid societies), schools, and social clubs to help their increasing population adjust to a new life in exile. In Florida, these forms of mutual support also helped to shield the community’s Afro-Caribbean immigrants from the extreme racism of the Jim Crow Era. While blacks and whites worked side-by-side in the cigar factories, women worked apart from the men and in the more menial parts of cigar production. There were racial tensions within the exile communities as well, especially in Florida.</p>
<p>The passage of the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917 granted Puerto Ricans full U.S. citizenship and was designed to encourage migration to “augment the common-labor supply,†and bolster the ranks of the military during World War I. The Jones-Shafroth Act contrasted sharply with the Immigration Act of 1917, which restricted immigration from parts of Europe and Asia. This contradiction suggests that the U.S. government viewed its role in Latin America as of a different character than its relationship with the nations of Europe and Asia. Regardless of the U.S. political agenda, the Jones-Shafroth Act opened the doors of the United States to hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans over the next half century.</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Background Essay on Cuban Immigration and Puerto Rican Migration to the United States
Subject
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Immigration and Migration
Creator
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American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Industrialization and Expansion (1877-1913)
Modern America (1914-1929)
Description
An account of the resource
This essay explores the dual phenomena of Cuban immigration and Puerto Rican migration to the United States, noting their relationship to those countries' respective independence movements as well as U.S. intervention in Cuba and Puerto Rico.
Rights
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ASHP
Cuban Immigration
lectores
Puerto Rican Migration
Work