Glad I read the whole thing. In Yorkshire, UK, Growler = Pork Pie.

Oh I do agree that Hine was a propagandist for his cause, and that it was a good and noble cause. I guess that any problem I have is with his attitude in this case. The family in this photo (with little Julin, the neighbour girl) are almost made to seem like villains of the piece when in all likelihood they were being exploited almost as much as the child. It is doubtful that they were small entrepreneurs who paid the little girl a pittance and far more likely that they were piece-workers who were paid a pittance by a company. Child labour was and is an evil thing but the real blame didn't lie with these people who are being painted as the height of moral decay (a growler for beer, dirty dishes, clothes everywhere).

You have to remember that Lewis Hine had a goal (ending child labor) and an audience he was trying to sway to achieve it (members of Congress, who would see these photos as part of the report of the National Child Labor Committee). So he may have painted things as being bleaker than most people might feel is warranted. Also note that little Julin is not part of this family; she's a neighbor child. We don't know if she was being paid to help out.

The father is talking, they must be having a nice conversation, this almost seems like a nice family hobby. I know that in my home if myself, my wife and mother-in-law sat around the table chatting and making paper flowers, you can bet my two young boys would be begging us to let them make some. And in keeping with other comments as to conditions, I see clean laundry hung up to dry, some folded towels on the bureau, and roughly folded clothes on the chair. Let's face it, these guys didn't have Maytags. I also agree that Hines comes across as a crabby nit picker in his narrative here.

The glasses look clean and put away (upside down) to me. These people may have had it better than some in the garment industry did during this time. Hardly the drama being described.

Foy

The map is of the Mediterranean, but the part in dark - presumably the focus of the family interest - is Italy and its newly acquired (in 1912 as a matter of fact) colonies of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. In 1934 the two would be united as Libya.

I hate to say it, but Hine sort of comes across as a sanctimonious complainer. He gives us a picture of these people but then complains about their cleanliness and their supposed drunkenness, at a time and circumstance where the safest thing to drink might have been the beer. (As for the razor strop near the window, the man undoubtedly shaved using a straight razor near the only dependable source of light in the whole place, the window.)

The old country? What was it?

100 years later the rent on this apartment in West Soho, NYC is probably hovering around $2000 per month. That's a lot of paper pansies.

[I visited the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side a few weeks ago and part of the exhibit is an actual tenement flat in a century-old building. And everyone's first reaction seemed to be "Wow, these are pretty nice!" Special notice taken of high ceilings, plank floors, interior windows, etc. - Dave]

Notice the razor strop hanging on the widow frame ... You kids get to making posies or you get the strap.