1917-Tobacco and child labor
Some tobacco growers used child labor to fill the large demand for workers. Employed as an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), Lewis Hine (1874-1940) documented working and living conditions of children in the United States between 1908 and 1924, and the photographs included here include observations made while visiting tobacco farms in Connecticut in 1917. Adrian Francis McDonald, in his The History of Tobacco Production in Connecticut written in 1938 for the Tercentenary Commission of the State of Connecticut, observed, “The fact that the leaves are plucked from the stalk makes it necessary to use boys in the harvesting operation for, unlike men, they do not need to work in a stooped posture.” Child labor was used into the early 1940s.
Images below courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
10 year old leaf boy and three “stringers,” 10, 12, and 13 yrs. old. Tobacco shed of American Sumatra Tob. Co.
In these two sheds were 41 girls and boys from 10 to 15 yrs., and only 24 girls and women of 16 and over.
The leaf-boys get $1.50 a day and some of the stringers of 10 and 12 make $1.20 a day, according to the Supt.
Location: S[outh] Windsor, Connecticut / L.W. Hine.
6:00 A.M. at Post Office Square. Truck load of tobacco workers bound for
American Sumatra Tobacco Farm, S[outh] Windsor. They return about 7 P.M.
Location: Hartford, Connecticut / L.W. Hine.
“Want any more MEN?” 7 year old Alec applying for job on tobacco farms.
“Like fun I take what what [sic] they give me. A dollar a day is the cheapest I work.”
Location: Connecticut. / L.W. Hine.
Field-workers, Amer[ican] Sumatra Tobacco Co. The Supt. called the boys out to the end of the rows
and we found 47 boys from 9 to 15 yrs. old, all working but could not get hold of them all.
The Supt. said, “We have to hire boys because we can’t get men to do the work.”
Many of them live in Hartford, Conn., and go back and forth on the trolley.
Location: S[outh] Windsor, Connecticut / L.W. Hine.