Customer Reviews

Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor

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This book weaves Hine's story together with his photographs of kids working in Maine's sardine canneries, Texas cotton fields, New York laundries, Tennessee and Georgia cotton mills and in textile mills all over the U.S. south. He took some of the most haunting photos of dark tunnels and grimy breaker rooms in Pennsylvania coalmines. He went inside glass factories, to farms, and onto city streets at 1 a.m. to photograph children distributing newspapers and 1 p.m. to watch them shining boots.

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If your kids occasionally gripe that they have it tough, get them this book and show them what the word means. Alyssa A. Lappen

Children and adults are both intrigued by this wonderful photo documentation of the history of immigrant children working in the United States. Lewis Hine's pictures tell the story and Russell Freedman's words add a greater depth to this sometimes sad yet beautiful celebration of children at work during the early 20th century.

"Kids At Work" is a great book to tell and show the children of today how hard it was back then. Lewis Hine takes most of the credit. Thanks to his great photos The Declaration Of Dependence was passed. It stated that kids would be dependent and should live a normal kids life. Which concisted of going to school, being able to play freely with other kids ect.. We the children of today thank Lewis Hine for giving us a free life. I also give Ressell Freedman credit for following Mr. Hine and writing this spectacular and amizing book. As far as I am concerned Hine and Freedman greatest authors of all time!!

Every year when I take books to schools I always include this one. First, it shows today's children what their life may have been like if Hine and other courageous people hadn't worked to get child labor laws passed. I also like to introduce students to biographies of people who made a difference but were not big names like A. Lincoln and M. Jordan. Though the tone of the book is somber- and the faces in his photographs haunting. I always end on a "high" note- the courage of Hines to climb with a heavy load up to the top of the Empire State building as it was being built.

This is a nonfiction photographic essay book that will touch any reader's heart. Mr. Freedman seems to know the facts and life of Mr. Hine very well. There is an extensive bibliography at the end of the book as wee. The information at the end seemed hard to believe but true. The book is only 11 years old so the facts aren't that dated. There are many saddening facts in this book. It reveals the truths about child labor in the text and photos.
The book was written to shine light on child labor history and to showcase some of Mr. Hine's photographs. The book is very interesting to read. There are quotes from some kids who worked in the factories and also some quotes from Mr. Hine who took great pride in accurately recording the facts about his subjects. This book could spark an interest in further study of this topic.
The information in this book is broken down and presented in an understandable order. The text is a harsh reality but it is presented well. The style gets the reader emotionally involved. The language is relatively simple and easy to read.
The information is laid out well and the references are listed in the back. There is a table of contents and bibliography and acknowledgement page.
The photos are a wonderful enhancement. The book would be nothing with out them. They are strategically placed and make the book what it is. There are captions that describe the pictures and they are discussed in the text.
This book could be used in the classroom to show what life was like and to talk about immigration and economic conditions.

Freedman has collected dozens of black and white photographs taken by Lewis Hine during the first decades of the twentieth century. Hine worked as an investigational photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). The NCLC wanted the United States government to pass laws concerning child labor, and thought that photos of the work children did would be more effective persuaders than mere speeches and statistics. Hine traveled the nation with his camera taking photographs, sometimes despite risk to his person.

The text of the book serves partly as a brief biography of Lewis Hine, and partly as explanatory backdrop for the scenes in the photographs. Freeman gives enough background information to put the images in their context, but not so much data as to overwhelm the reader. The machines, tools and environments are so strange to the modern eye that without clarification, many pictures would be meaningless.

The most shocking photographs in the collection are of the young boys involved in the coalmines. The filth on their faces, hands and clothing is astonishing. By comparison, the dangers and deplorable conditions of working in a cotton mill are not as readily apparent as those of working in a coal mine. However, reading Freeman's text exposes the dangers of moving machinery and smothering lint and humidity not so clear in the photos.

The book concludes by sharing the changes in child labor laws that Hine's photographs helped bring about, as well as information on the child labor situation of today.

This book is full of eye opening and shocking information for the unaware. School may be hard, but without child labor laws things could be so much worse.

I found and bought this book at the Goodwill and thought it would be nice for looking at the photographs, since we like to look at real historical photos in our homeschool. Well, I decided to start reading the book and couldn't put it down. It didn't take long to finish it and I really enjoyed it. It was a real eye-opener. How interesting that Hines had to sneak around and often hide in order to get his photographs. He might tell a shop owner that he needed a photograph of a machine, but then asked the child worker to stand next to it so people could see the large size of the machine. Of course, he was really showcasing the child who had to run the machine. He knew exactly how many inches from the ground each button on his vest was, so a child could stand next to him and he could quickly tell how tall they were. When most of the photos in the book were taken, there were over 2 million American children younger than 16 who worked 12 or more hours a day, 6 days a week, for pitiful wages under unhealthy and hazardous conditions.

My youngest child is 5 and many of the photos were of children the same age, and younger, working in places like cotton fields or in spinner factories, many with bare feet. What a tragic life these children had, most not living very long. How would you like to work in a glass factory with the temperature in the building 100 - 130 degrees? The molten glass they worked with was 3,133 degrees! These glassblower assistants made about 65 cents a day; a pretty good wage back then. But, because it was so hazardous and unhealthy in the glass houses, these assistants usually didn't live past the age of 42 (I just turned 42 this year!).

How sad to see pictures of the breaker boys in the coal mines hunched over, all day long, picking the slate and stones from the coal. The foreman would hit them on their heads or shoulders with a broom handle if he thought they weren't working hard enough. If they fell into the coal chute, they would quickly be smothered to death. Do you think shucking oysters or peeling shrimp would be easier? The shrimp oozed an acid that would eat holes in leather shoes and tin pails, yet children had to handle these with their bare little fingers. 4-year old Mary could shuck two pails of oysters each day, making 10 cents. One mother and her 4 children worked in their tenement apartment making paper forget-me-not-flowers. All 5 of them sat working every day, all day long, working by the light of a kerosene lamp. The youngest, Angelica, was 3-years old and could make 540 flowers a day, earning her family 5 cents.

I think most children and adults today have no clue what life was really like for people back then; how hard they had to work for such little pay. I can't imagine my 5-year old doing what these kids were forced to do, let alone go without Nick Jr. for one day. I think this is an excellent book for children and adults to read and discuss. I plan on having my 14-year old read it this year for school. It's a book definitely worth reading and looking at.

This soft-cover book is written like a children's textbook, but Hine's photos look great all throughout. There are quite a few full-page prints, roughly 8x6 sized. I'm very satisfied with the purchase; only Aperture would print a book with better quality reproductions, and that's out of my price range right now.

Lewis Hine was a photographer who took pictures of young children at work. There were many different jobs that children held during the late 1800's into the early 1900's. Hine's photographs were extremely powerful. Each photograph provided information about the types of jobs children held and gave some family history. The majority of the children had little to no education because their parents relied on them to work and earn an income. Many of the factories preferred the work of younger children compared to adults because the children were quicker and were too young to complain. Hine has displayed photos in this book of children as young as four years old shucking oysters. The most dangerous job that was portrayed in the book was coal mining, unfortunately it was also the best paying job; a child had to be at least fourteen to perform the tasks. Parents often lied about their child's age to get them into the mines. The book would have been just as powerful without any of the information. The pictures were enough to convey the children's stories. Russell Freedman has done a wonderful job putting this book together. Seeing the children physically working was moving and emotional, which helped the author get his point across.

I purchased this book for my granddaughters' education. I wanted them to learn about child labor in the early 20th century. I found the book educational and the pictures poignant. The children in today's society, on the most part, have it easy; regarding having to work in relation to what children were made to do in an earlier time. I was happy that I purchased the book for my library.