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Vintage photos of:
Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.
[REV 25-NOV-2014]
Machine used in mine that digs the coal and loads it on the car. With it three men can do the work of 50 in the old way. Yet they use boys to drive and trap. Gary, West Virginia. September 1908. View full size.
Bank Boss (on right), Brake Boy (in center). Laura Mine, Red Star, West Virginia. September 1908. View full size.
September 1908. Gary, West Virginia. "Drivers and Mules in a coal mine where much of the mining and carrying is done by machinery. Open flame on oil headlamps." View full size.
From the Web site of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and the Museum of Anthracite Mining in Ashland:
October 1914. Mobile, Alabama. "Young newsboy who begins work at daybreak." View full size. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine.
Eugene Dalton, November 1913, Fort Worth, Texas. Some results of messenger and newsboy work. For nine years this 16-year-old boy has been newsboy and messenger for drug stores and telegraph companies. He was recently brought before the Judge of the Juvenile Court for incorrigibility at home. Is now out on parole, and was working again for drug company when he got a job carrying grips in the Union Depot. He is on the job from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. (17 hours a day) for seven days in the week. His mother and the judge think he uses cocaine, and yet they let him put in these long hours every day. He told me "There ain't a house in 'The Acre' (red-light district) that I ain't been in. At the drug store, all my deliveries were down there." Says he makes $15 to $18 a week. View full size.
December 1910. "Shorpy Higginbotham, a 'greaser' on the tipple at Bessie Mine, of the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Co. in Alabama. Said he was 14 years old, but it is doubtful. Carries two heavy pails of grease, and is often in danger of being run over by the coal cars." Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.