Lewis Hine
American, 1874­1940
Spinner in Cotton Mill in North Carolina
1908
Silver gelatin print
11.4 x 15.2 cm
Acquired through exchange with the George Eastman House, 1959.859

The young girl in this photograph is dwarfed by a giant cotton-spinning machine. When the American photographer Lewis Hine took this picture in the early 1900s, young children often worked ten to twelve hours a day in factories. Hine used his camera as a tool to bring about change. He wanted to show in photographs like this one how evil child labor was. His pictures were widely published, causing public outrage. Laws that prevented the hiring and mistreatment of children were eventually passed, largely as a result of Hine’s powerful camera work.