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Charlie and Ollie Allen, child laborers
About this photograph
Lewis Wickes Hine, photographer. From the records of the United States National Child Labor Committee.
- Date created
- November 1914
- Location
- Henderson, North Carolina
- License
- This photograph copyright ©2009. Terms of use
See this photograph in context
- Child labor in North Carolina's textile mills: The photographs of Lewis Hine show the lives and work of children in North Carolina's textile mill villages in the first decades of the twentieth century. (Page 7)
Related media
Learn more
- Search LEARN NC for child labor, history, living conditions, North Carolina, textile mills, and Vance County.
In the classroom
- See our collection of articles on visual literacy for ideas on using photographs meaningfully in the classroom.
Charlie and Ollie Allen had been working at the Harriet Cotton Mills for two years when this picture of them was taken. They are standing in front of their clapboard home while a younger child stands on the porch above them. There is trash in the yard and the front porch is being held up at the corner by a large slab of rock. The photographer wrote that there was “a house full of children, and the sanitary conditions are frightful.” He estimated that Ollie was about 10 years of and probably working illegally. The boys’ father and and older brother also work at the mill.
