Lewis Hine's Lesson For Today's Media

 Lewis Hine, a brilliant photographer whose pictures exposed the crime of child labor in the United States in the early 1900s, was born in Oshkosh, WI on September 26, 1874. His family lived in the building on North Main St. that currently houses the Jambalaya Art Gallery. The gallery hosted a reception on Sept. 26 to recognize Hine's 150th birthday, at which Rep. Lori Palmeri read a proclamation from Governor Tony Evers, while the Oshkosh Landmarks Commission presented the owner of the building with a plaque designating it as a historical landmark. An exhibit of Hine's works will be in display at Jambalaya Thursdays and Fridays from 4-8 p.m. and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. thru October 31st. In late October the Time Community Theatre will be screening a free documentary on the works of Lewis Hine.

One of many photos taken by Lewis Hine for the National Child Labor Commission. Hine once said, "There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers. The object of employing children is not to train them, but to get high profits from their work." 

It's extremely disappointing, though not at all surprising, how little interest the regional, state, and national media have in Lewis Hine. His photo journalism inspired a generation of children's rights and worker's rights activists, which eventually led to Keating-Owen Act of 1916 (declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1918) and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Among other provisions, FLSA mandated minimum wages, overtime pay, and prohibition on the employment of minors in "oppressive child labor."  

Unfortunately child labor abuses did not end in 1938, which is why we need modern media not just to issue rare periodic reminders of Lewis Hine and his photos, but to incorporate his ethic into their own reporting on modern employment practices.  The Department of Labor found "688 minors employed illegally in hazardous occupations in fiscal  year 2022, the highest annual count since fiscal year 2011." DOL found two 10-year-old workers at a Louisville McDonald's franchise. In 2023 the New York Times featured a shocking expose' on exploitation of migrant children illegally allowed to work in brutal jobs. As noted in the report, "Arriving in record numbers, they're ending up in dangerous jobs that violate child labor laws - including in factories that make products for well-known brands like Cheetos and Fruit of the Loom." Meanwhile Republicans in Wisconsin would apparently have no problem having 14-year-olds serve alcohol in the state. 

Some of Lewis Hine's most impactful and iconic photos were of children working in brutal conditions in coal mines. 

Reporting on child labor abuses is virtually absent from mainstream television news. Print media, as noted above, will report on the abuses, but their reports rarely feature photo essays as powerful as what Hine produced. Samples of his photos can be found here, here, and here. 

Why are modern corporate media minimizing or ignoring the plight of contemporary child laborers? Writing in the Smithsonian Magazine, photo historian Beth Saunders hypothesizes factors related to immigration status and race: 

A recent surge of unaccompanied minors, primarily from Central America, has brought new attention to America’s old problem of child labor and has threatened the very laws Hine and the National Child Labor Committee worked to enact.

Some estimates suggest that around two-thirds of migrant children end up working full time, with some laboring more hours than current laws permit or working without the proper authorizations. Many of them perform hazardous jobs similar to those of Hine’s subjects: handling dangerous equipment and being exposed to noxious chemicals in factories, slaughterhouses and industrial farms.

While the content of Hine’s photographs remains pertinent to today’s child labor crisis, a key distinction between the subject of Hine’s photographs and working children today is race.

Hine focused his camera almost exclusively on white children who arrived in the country during waves of immigration from Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As art historian Natalie Zelt argues, Hine’s pictorial treatment of Black children—either ignored or forced to the margins of his images—implied to viewers that the face of childhood in America was, by default, white.

The perceived racial hierarchies of Hine’s era reverberate into the present, where underage migrants of color live and work at the margins of society.

Ending modern child labor abuses, especially given the racial hierarchies described by Saunders, will require sustained activism on behalf of the voiceless victims of corporate greed and governmental neglect. Mainstream corporate media could assist the effort by empowering photojournalists to produce Hine-like iconic photos. Visual rhetoric scholars Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites defined iconic photos as "photographic images produced in print, electronic, or digital media that are (1) recognized by everyone within a public culture, (2) understood to be representations of historically significant events, (3) objects of strong emotional identification and response, an (4) regularly reproduced or copied across a range of media, genres, and topics." 

Given the hyper visual age that we are living in, it is simply impossible to spark action on social injustices without iconic images, especially those that produce a "strong emotional identification and response." Taking such photos often requires the photographer to take great personal risks. Hine himself, it is said, often had to disguise himself as a Bible salesman in order to get access to the inside of a factory abusing children. When his true intentions were discovered by shop foremen, he sometimes faced physical violence. He was willing to pay that price to expose the extreme injustice taking place inside. 

Regional, state, and national media can be excused for ignoring a 150th anniversary reception. What cannot be excused is their failure to expose, systematically and repeatedly, predatory harm and abuse in American society, and not just of children. Lewis Hine taught journalists how to use the power of photographic images to spark social change. Modern mainstream media have yet to learn the lesson. 

Hine did not just photograph child labor. His images capturing the building of the Empire State Building never fail to give the viewer a jolt.