Front row, far right. If that kid wasn't a classic bully, then my name isn't "Hey, punk!"

How and when did they learn to be so grim? Give me some Lewis Hine factory boys any day if this is the alternative. Front and Center Middle has the most insolent look I think I've ever seen on someone so young. You just know he grew up to be somebody's (hated?) boss. Second from the Right, Top Row looks like someone's just stuck a none too brief brief in his briefs.

As the mother to two kids with ears that stuck out, I learned to cut their hair so their ears were not accentuated. Ears have not changed a bit in the last 100 years. Hairstyles have.

Looks like a real piece of work.

I think it has more to do with the age of the boys. I remember reading somewhere that our ears reach their adult size around 12 years of age. Long before our craniums and bodies have stopped growing.

There's something about turn of the 20th century ears - they're sometimes oddly shaped and often attracting attention to their lateral obtrusiveness (trying to be nice here).

I guess things have changed in the old clubhouse.

Privilege is I suppose a relative term. One of these boys might be Frank Little who was a page between 1910 and 1912. Before he became a page he sold newspapers in front of the Capitol. His father worked as a clerk at the census bureau. A couple of the senators took notice of him and arranged for him to get an appointment as a page. There was no page school so he attended public school and then paid for private school, although not all pages continued their education. He'd go on to be a Captain in World War I. He went on to get a PhD and ran the clinical laboratory at the Marine Hospital in Norfolk. In 1983 he talked about his time as a page for the Senate's Oral History project:

http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/oral_history/J_Franklin_Litt...

No lack of that in this image.

Why do I feel like I've done something wrong??

The boy on the front row, far left is a dead ringer for the Senator from West Virginia. I knew is was on in years... but geesh.

Isn't life strange and discriminatory when one looks at the picture of Clarence Wool working his youth off, barefooted in a cotton mill while these boys, born at the very same time, are most likely destined for a life of relative leisure and prestige in comparison. Of course it is possible for things to change drastically in the process, but our station in life seems to be somewhat determined at birth (at least it was around the turn of the century). Lots of food for thought in these two pictures. Shorpy is a REAL reality show.