--- title: 100 Photographs: Cotton Mill Girl | TIME description: Lewis Hine’s photograph of a girl at work in a cotton mill, part of his monumental series on child labor, forced Americans to reckon with their economic exploitation of youth canonical: https://time.com/video/VOTReuUJ/ og:title: 100 Photographs: Cotton Mill Girl og:description: Lewis Hine’s photograph of a girl at work in a cotton mill, part of his monumental series on child labor, forced Americans to reckon with their economic exploitation of youth og:url: https://time.com/video/VOTReuUJ/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/VOTReuUJ/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 100 Photographs: Cotton Mill Girl twitter:description: Lewis Hine’s photograph of a girl at work in a cotton mill, part of his monumental series on child labor, forced Americans to reckon with their economic exploitation of youth twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/VOTReuUJ/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # 100 Photographs: Cotton Mill Girl > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 100 Photographs: Cotton Mill Girl [Watch (HLS stream): 100 Photographs: Cotton Mill Girl](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/VOTReuUJ.m3u8) (3:43)  _Published 2016-11-11. Lewis Hine’s photograph of a girl at work in a cotton mill, part of his monumental series on child labor, forced Americans to reckon with their economic exploitation of youth_ --- Jul 27, 2023 6:52 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [100 Photographs: Dali Atomicus](/video/c7yPeZ12/) ### 100 Photographs: Dali Atomicus [100 Photographs: Tragedy in Iraq](/video/EnQVPE0R/) ### 100 Photographs: Tragedy in Iraq [Photographer Martin Schoeller's TIME 100 Journey](/video/OTVrRxcV/) ### Photographer Martin Schoeller's TIME 100 Journey --- ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] In the early 1900s, the general population in those years had very little understanding of what was meant by child labor and child exploitation. [ MUSIC ] The kinds of jobs you would find children working in ranged from the mine The factories, the cotton mills, to working out on the streets selling newspapers. [ MUSIC ] Injuries, even deaths, were very common among children. [ MUSIC ] The parents would often say that they needed the income that their children brought in. That that was what allowed them To continue to survive. A number of parents were advocates for child labor and their children thought that that was the way life was. One of the first things the National Child Labor Committee did was to hire a photographer. River. They hired Lewis Hine, who was then their photographer for the next two decades. [ MUSIC ] They sent him around the country to identify, find, and photograph children in exploitive Avoided of situations. [ MUSIC ] He promoted himself as a Bible salesman. He said he was bringing his camera along so he could photograph kids reading Bibles. A boy would say he was 13, when in fact he was 11. Or a girl would say she was 12, when in fact she might be 9. [ MUSIC ] The photograph is of a young girl, ten or eleven years old, her name was Sadie Pfeifer. At a cotton mill in Lancaster, South Carolina. She's standing in front of a large loom on a long hallway, starring at and working hard on the job of selecting the quality products. She's probably worked most of the night. It's nearing the end of her shift. She stands there iconic As a representative of hundreds of other girls who were being treated just like her and who have no choice. That photograph raised the consciousness immediately. You see that photograph and you cannot look away from it. It doesn't say America. [ MUSIC ] Lewis Hines's stark photographs influenced legislation over a period of roughly 35 years. [ MUSIC ] This body of work on child labor represented how he thought and how he felt that children must not be exploited. [ MUSIC ] He represents the most important photographer in terms of social advocacy and social change in the first half of the 20th century. [ MUSIC ] ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"100 Photographs: Cotton Mill Girl","description":"Lewis Hine’s photograph of a girl at work in a cotton mill, part of his monumental series on child labor, forced Americans to reckon with their economic exploitation of youth","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/VOTReuUJ/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2016-11-11T02:33:17.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/VOTReuUJ.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/VOTReuUJ/","duration":"PT3M43S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/VOTReuUJ/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```