These children were deprived of their childhood.
After the Civil war in the US, the availability of natural resources, new inventions, and a receptive market has provoked the rapid development of industry. The demand for labor has also increased, and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many children joined the ranks of the workers. Wages in the factories was negligible, so children often had to work to help their parents to earn at least food. For 20 years, by 1910, the number of working children aged 15 years and older increased from 1.5 to 2 million
These little workers have rarely experienced the joy of youth. The luxury to go to school to get knowledge and a chance to start a better life, is rarely provided. Hard work has caused irreparable harm to the health of the child. Children suffered from underweight, stunting of growth, curvature of the spine, tuberculosis, and bronchitis (especially those who worked in coal mines and cotton plantations), not to mention the physical and psychological exhaustion.
New York photographer Lewis Hine believed that photography will be able to tell the public about this situation. He traveled the country and filmed working at various enterprises of children trying to write their history, or at least age.
Gorovoi — work, opening and closing doors in the mine workings in order not to disturb the ventilation circuit of the mine, West Virginia, 1908.
Employers hired children because fee for their unskilled labor was less than adults, and their small hands were better suited to work with small tools. Immigrants and visitors from small settlements often sent out to work while their children or worked with them.
