- Historical Eras > Industrialization and Expansion (1877-1913) (x)
- Item Type > Photograph (x)
- Theme > Work (x)
We found 7 items that match your search
"View of the Ewen Coal Breaker of the Pa. Coal Co."
Young boys were often employed in coal mines in the mining regions of Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Kentucky, and West Virginia, where boys as young as twelve could be legally put to work. Often working in "coal breakers," sorting out slate and other [...]
Child Cotton Pickers Haul Heavy Loads
Child cotton-pickers on a farm in Bells, Texas, documented by Lewis W. Hine, a photographer for the National Child Labor Committee. Children had long been used as cotton-pickers and other agricultural workers in the South, where the tradition of [...]
"Cotton Picking in Georgia"
In the 1890s, most African Americans labored in the southern cotton economy. Some owned their own farms, but many worked in a system called sharecropping. Landlords provided sharecroppers with land, a cabin, farm tools, and cotton seed; in return, [...]
"Bananas Being Loaded into Waiting Carts"
New York dockworkers unload bananas from a cargo ship into a waiting cart in this early twentieth-century photograph by maritime photographer Edwin Levick. Their work was dangerous—the fatality rate for longshoremen was higher than for any [...]
"The Fish Dealer's Daughter"
As historian John Kuo Wei Tchen notes of this portrait, "the girl's tattered clothing and gloves on both hands clearly indicate that she works hard, probably assisting her father in carrying the wicker shrimp baskets shown behind." Tchen [...]
Female Garment Workers Labor in a New York City Tenement
Concentrated in New York City, the garment industry developed side by side with the sweatshop system of labor. Sweatshops employed a handful of workers, almost all of whom were immigrant Jewish or Italian women. They were supervised by contractors [...]
A Lector Reads to Cigar Workers
The lector, or reader, was an institution in Tampa cigar factories. Elected and paid by the workers, the lector read material of their choosing aloud as the workers assembled cigars. Lectores read newspapers, current affairs publications, and even [...]