The Photos that Shocked America:
The Horrors of Child Labor Exposed by Lewis Hine
The Opposition:
No Need for Child Labor Laws
"The employers are not to blame for the evils of child labor. Such labor is simply a stage in the development of an industrial society." - Holland Thompson, Historian
Some mill owners thought that by hiring kids, they were helping them by keeping them from standing around and doing nothing. A letter written by Geo. S. Cox, owner of Minaret Mills, to Honorable Geo. S. Graham, the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the House in Washington, D.C., thought that child labor regulation should be left to each state, not the federal government. Business owners did not want to lose their profits and believed that children who didn't work would not be productive citizens, despite no evidence shown to support this.
Minaret Mills. Received by Hon. Geo. S. Graham, 7 April, 1924. Records of Rights.
“If the children do not get to work until after they are 16 years of age, our experience has taught us that they will not work at all, and that the nation thereby will be raising an inordinate quantity of loafers.”
- Geo. S. Cox, owner Minaret Mills, 1924
Header Photo Credit: Ten Year Old Spinner in N. Carolina Cotton Mill, 1908, National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.