Children at Work: Exposing child labor in the cotton mills of the Carolinas

In this lesson, students will learn about the use of child labor in the cotton mills of the Carolinas during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They will learn what life was like for a child worker and then write an investigative news report exposing the practice of child labor in the mills, using quotations from oral histories with former child mill workers and photographs of child laborers taken by social reform photographer Lewis Hine.

A lesson plan for grades 8–12 Social Studies

By Dayna Durbin Gleaves

Provided by UNC Libraries / Documenting the American South

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In this lesson, students will learn about the use of child labor in the cotton mills of the Carolinas during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They will learn what life was like for a child worker — how much money the workers earned, how many hours they worked each day, what their homes were like, and what they did for fun. Students will then write an investigative news report exposing the practice of child labor in the mills, using quotations from oral histories with former child mill workers and photographs of child laborers taken by social reform photographer Lewis Hine.

Learning outcomes

Students will:

• know details about the lives of child workers in the cotton mills of North Carolina during the early 20th century, and learn about the movement to end child labor.
• empathize with former child laborers after listening to their oral histories as they talk about their experiences in the mills.
• narrate a news report with appropriate structure, detail, point of view, and use of grammar and spelling, and may use technology to add an image to their news report.

Teacher planning

Materials needed

• Information about the Industrial Revolution and child labor around the turn of the century
• Information about the use of child labor in Southern cotton mills, from “Websites” below or from your school’s library
• Access to oral histories and photographs from UNC’s Documenting the American South collection (see “Websites”)
• Oral history excerpts:
  • Ila Hartsell Dodson
  • James Pharis
  • Alice P. Evitt
• Transcripts of oral history excerpts for each student (available at the links above.)
• Computer with internet connection and speakers, or a CD player if you have burned your own CD.

Time required for lesson

1-2 class periods, plus time for students to write news report

Activity one: Listening to the mill workers

1. Briefly review the rise of the Industrial Revolution with students, mentioning the increase in factories and mills.
2. Introduce students to the issue of child labor during the Industrial Revolution, especially children working in the cotton mills of the South. (For more information, see “Websites” below.)
3. Introduce the concept of oral histories, and discuss their value as we study important events. Mention that oral histories provide a chance for the “regular person” to record his or her experiences, not just the well-known or famous people often recorded in written history. Ask students to come up with more reasons we should value oral histories — such as allowing minority groups to record and publicize their experiences, making connections between generations, and passing on the art of storytelling. (For more about oral histories, see the LEARN NC guide “Oral History in the Classroom,” and other websites under “Supplemental information” below.)
4. Hand out the transcripts of the oral history excerpts to students.
5. Ila Hartsell Dodson oral history excerpt
   • Read students this introduction to the oral history:
     

     Ila Hartsell Dodson was born in 1907 in South Carolina and began working in the Brandon Cotton Mill at age 14. Her mother, father, and all of her nine siblings worked for various cotton mills in North and South Carolina. She met her husband working in the mill, and spent all of her young life living in mill villages. Here, Ms. Dodson speaks about her strong desire to begin working, despite her parents’ hope that she will continue attending school.

   • Play the excerpt for students. (2 min 5 sec)
     

     Please upgrade your Flash Player and/or enable JavaScript in your browser to listen to this audio file.

     Download recording (Right-click or option-click) | About the recording

   • Discussion questions:
     • Why was Ila so eager to start working in the mill?
     • Why did Ila bring the family Bible with her to City Hall to get the worker’s permit?
     • What were Ila’s reasons for not attending high school?
     • Would you rather go to high school or work 8 hours a day, 6 days a week making money at the cotton mill, as Ila did? Why would you make that decision?
6. James Pharis oral history excerpt
   • Read students this introduction to the oral history:
     

     James Pharis began working in the cotton mills in Eden, North Carolina at age 8. He worked for 11 hours a day and earned 25 cents a day for several years. He met his wife, who also began working in the mill at age 8, at a square dance in the mill village sponsored by the mill owners. Here, Mr. Pharis remembers smashing his hand while working in the mill as a 9 or 10 year old, and having to wait hours for the mill doctors to help him.

   • Play the excerpt for students. (2 min)
     

     Please upgrade your Flash Player and/or enable JavaScript in your browser to listen to this audio file.

     Download recording (Right-click or option-click) | About the recording

   • Discussion questions:
     • How did James injure his hand?
     • How would you react if you were in James’ place: a small boy with a painful injury and no one to help?
     • How could such injuries have been prevented?
7. Alice P. Evitt oral history excerpt
   • Read students this introduction to the oral history:
     

     Alice P. Evitt was born in 1898 and began working at the cotton mills near Charlotte, North Carolina in 1910 when she was 12 years old. She worked 12 hours a day, every day except Sunday, and earned 25 cents a day for her work. In this except, Ms. Evitt talks about the terrible working conditions in the mills she worked in as a young girl. In particular, she remembers the awful heat in the mill. When she was an older adult, she worked in a mill with air conditioning, but the first mills she worked in had no air conditioning at all.

   • Play the excerpt for students. (31 sec)
     

     Please upgrade your Flash Player and/or enable JavaScript in your browser to listen to this audio file.

     Download recording (Right-click or option-click) | About the recording

   • Discussion questions:
     • How would the heat have affected the child workers like Alice?
     • Along with the oppressive heat, what other conditions in a mill or factory would child workers have suffered?

Activity two: Researching the news report

1. You may want to begin the activity by briefly reviewing what the class heard in the oral histories, and discussing how the excerpts reflect what they’ve learned about child labor in the mills.
2. Introduce the concept of muckrakers — journalists who investigated and exposed social problems during the Progressive era of social reform, from the 1890s to the 1920s. You may want to touch on muckraking journalists and topics such as Upton Sinclair and the meat packing industry, Ida Tarbell and the Standard Oil company trust, Jacob Riis and the conditions in urban slums, etc.
3. Explain that the students will write as muckrakers, exposing the evils of child labor in the cotton mills of the Carolinas during the early 20th century in a news report. They will be using the words of former child workers and pictures of child workers taken by Lewis Hine from the University of North Carolina’s Documenting the American South collection to make their case against child labor.
4. Distribute and review the news report assignment (under “Assessment” below).
5. Give students the URLs for the websites that contain the content (oral histories and photographs) they will use. These links are included in “Websites” below.
6. Have students begin researching information about child labor and accessing websites for their news reports.

Assessment

News Report Assignment:

As we have learned, many of the social problems of the early 20th century were brought to light by “muckrakers” — journalists who investigated, documented and exposed social ills. Without their work, these problems may never have been reformed. Imagine yourself as an outraged muckraker, learning about the use of child labor in the cotton mills of the Carolinas and ready to share the shocking information you’ve uncovered with the world. You will write a news story about child labor in the mills, using at least two quotes from former child workers such as Alice P. Evitt, Ila Hartsell Dodson and James Pharis, and including at least one photograph of child workers taken by reformer Lewis Hine. Make sure to establish the facts of child labor in the mills, organize your paper using a logical structure, and explain why this issue is important for your readers to know. Revise your paper for organization, spelling and grammar before you turn it in.

Students should write a thoughtful, logically organized news story. This story should include details and facts about the use of child workers in the cotton mills, as well as at least two quotes from workers and one image from the Documenting the American South collection. Students should also demonstrate empathy for the child workers by accurately documenting their plight. Students may use software to create a news story that resembles the look of a “real” newspaper article if available, but may also simply include the images and text in a word processing document.

You may also assess student understanding of the oral histories by gathering responses to the discussion questions for each of the oral history excerpts.

Websites

• Entire Alice P. Evitt oral history from Documenting the American South
• Entire Ila Hartsell Dodson oral history from Documenting the American South
• Entire James Pharis oral history from Documenting the American South
• More oral histories with former child mill workers from Documenting the American South:
  • Letha Ann Osteen
  • Icy Norman
• Child Labor in the Carolinas: Account of Investigations Made in the Cotton Mills of North and South Carolina, by Rev. A. E. Seddon, A. H. Ulm and Lewis W. Hine, under the Direction of the Southern Office of the National Child Labor Committee. (Primary document available online from UNC’s Documenting the American South. Includes photographs taken in the mills by Lewis Hine.)

Supplemental information

Oral histories

• “The Value of Oral History”
• “Oral History in the Classroom”
• “Making Sense of Oral History” — A teacher-friendly overview of oral histories with activities to use and analyze them, from a historian at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

Child labor in the U.S. and child labor reform

• Child Labor in America 1908-1912: Photographs of Lewis Hine from the History Place