Processed by
Glenn McMullen and Dorothy Nicholson
28 August 2003
Manuscript and Visual Collections Department
William Henry Smith Memorial Library
Indiana Historical Society
450 West Ohio Street
Indianapolis, IN 46202-3269
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VOLUME OF |
3 folders |
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COLLECTION |
1908, ca. 1912 |
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PROVENANCE: |
Photocollect, 740 West End Ave., New York, NY 10025 |
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RESTRICTIONS: |
None |
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COPYRIGHT: |
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REPRODUCTION |
Permission to reproduce or publish material in this collection must be obtained from the Indiana Historical Society. |
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ALTERNATE |
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RELATED |
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ACCESSION |
1997.0145 |
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NOTES: |
Lewis Wickes Hine (1874–1940) was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the youngest of three children of Douglas Hill and Sarah (Hayes) Hine, both natives of New York state.
Hine was educated at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and New York University, the last of which awarded him a Pd.M. degree in 1905. In 1904, he married Sara Ann Rich of Oshkosh; they had one son, Corydon Lewis.
Hine began to use a camera in 1903, photographing immigrants arriving at Ellis Island and in their living and working environments. Between 1907 and 1921, Hine took photographs of child laborers nationwide for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). The NCLC, still in existence, was founded as a private non-profit organization in 1904 and was incorporated by Congress in 1907 with the mission of raising awareness and reforms in the area of child labor. The photographs Hine took were used in NCLC publications and exhibitions, and they were instrumental in bringing about child labor legislative reform.
In a break from his work for the National Child Labor Committee, Hine was sent abroad by the American Red Cross after World War I to photograph relief activities. In 1931 he made a day-by-day record of the construction of New York City’s Empire State Building. A year later, a collection of his industrial photographs appeared in a book, Men at Work.
Hine died at Hastings-on-Hudson, N. Y., in 1940. In the year before his death he estimated that he had taken between 15,000 and 20,000 negatives.
Sources:
"Lewis Wickes Hine." Dictionary
of American Biography, Supplements 1-2: To 1940. American Council of
Learned Societies, 1944-1958.
Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The
Gale Group. 2003. http://www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC
National Child Labor Committee website: http://www.kapow.org/nclc.htm. Accessed 23 July 2003
The collection contains ten of Hine’s vintage gelatin silver prints created as part of his work for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). These prints document industrial conditions and child labor practices in Indiana in 1908, with one photograph of a poster made several years later. The prints contain Hine’s negative numbers; some have handwritten notations or typed captions. (The captions are said to have been Hine’s own.)
Geographical locations include Indianapolis, Peru, and Hammond, Indiana, and all the photographs of industrial scenes date from 1908. A photograph of an anti–child labor poster, based on Hine’s work, dates from around 1912. The arrangement is by Hine’s negative numbers. These negatives, however, are not part of the collection.
The main body of Hine’s NCLC photographs were purchased by the University of Maryland library in the late 1970s. Other Hine photographs are in the Library of Congress collections. The prints in this collection were among some found in the 1990s in NCLC offices. They were sold by the organization through Photocollect, a New York City gallery, in 1996.
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CONTENTS |
CONTAINER |
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“Glass Work, Indiana.” Vintage gelatin silver print (Hine negative no. 78) “Putting Bottles into the Annealing Oven. An Indianapolis Glass Works, 1 A.M.” Vintage gelatin silver print (Hine negative no. 88) “A Glass Works in Indiana, Night Shift Going to Work.” Vintage gelatin silver print (Hine negative no. 91) “Indianapolis, 1908” [Packing House]. Vintage gelatin silver print (Hine negative no. 98) |
Folder 1 |
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“Jack, A Bright Indianapolis Boy of 13.” Vintage gelatin silver print (Hine negative no. 111) “9 P.M. in an Indiana Glass Works.” Vintage gelatin silver print (Hine negative no. 124) “An Indiana Glass Works and Some of its Workers.” Vintage gelatin silver print (Hine negative no. 127) |
Folder 2 |
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“Boy Working at Circular Saw, Peru, Indiana.” Vintage gelatin silver print (Hine negative no. 225) “Going Home 5:30 P.M., Hammond, Indiana.” Vintage gelatin silver print (Hine negative no. 236) “A Girl’s Chance” [Photograph of an anti–child labor poster]. Vintage gelatin silver print (Hine negative no. 3683) |
Folder 3 |
For additional information on this collection, including a list of subject headings that may lead you to related materials:
1. Go to the Indiana Historical Society's online catalog: http://157.91.92.2/
2. Click on the "Basic Search" icon.
3. Select "Call Number" from the "Search In:" box.
4. Search for the collection by its basic call number (in this case, P 0407).
5. When you find the collection, go to the "Full Record" screen for a list of headings that can be searched for related materials.