Oyster Shuckers (Primary Title)
Lewis W. Hine, American, 1874 – 1940 (Artist)
In cooperation with the National Child Labor Committee (a task force advocating for child labor laws), Lewis Hine traveled across the country to record the working conditions of children as a young as three in factories and sweatshops. In 1911 Hine remarked, “A line of canning factories stretches along the Gulf Coast from Florida to Louisiana. I have witnessed many varieties of child labor horrors…but the climax, the logical conclusion of the ‘laissez-faire’ policy regarding the exploitation of children is to be seen in the oyster-shuckers and shrimppickers in that locality.” Hine’s photographs share with George Bellows’s paintings, also in this gallery, an interest in the resilience and humanity of children in abject circumstances.
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