PBA Galleries

x, [2], 1278 pp. First appearance of 50 very early Lewis Hine photographs reproduced in half-tone, contained in articles in this compendium, including "Immigrant Types in the Steel District," "The Mill Town Courts and Their Lodgers," "Pittsburgh Labor in the Steel District," "The Industrial Environment of Pittsburgh's Working Women," and most notoriously "Child Labor in the Carolinas." The volume also contains articles by Jane Addams (Hull House), and Jacob Riis, and over 20 reproductions of drawings by Joseph Stella who In 1908 was commissioned for the series on industrial Pittsburgh, later published in The Pittsburgh Survey. 23.5x16.5 cm (9¼x6½"), green buckram. First Edition.  

In 1907, Hine became the staff photographer of the Russell Sage Foundation; he photographed life in the steel-making districts and people of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for the influential sociological study called The Pittsburgh Survey. In 1908 he became the photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). Over the next decade, Hine documented child labor, with focus on the use of child labor in the Carolina Piedmont, to aid the NCLC's lobbying efforts to end the practice.  Hine's work for the NCLC was often dangerous. As a photographer, he was frequently threatened with violence or even death by factory police and foremen. At the time, the immorality of child labor was meant to be hidden from the public. Photography was not only prohibited but also posed a serious threat to the industry. To gain entry to the mills, mines and factories, Hine was forced to assume many guises. At times he was a fire inspector, postcard vendor, Bible salesman, or even an industrial photographer making a record of factory machinery. Institutional plates and stamps with call number on spine.