“The Work of Little Hands”
A Documentary About Child Labor
By: Amanda Millatt, Jessica Hinton and Natalee Schiavoni
Process
Our group choose to use child labor as our topic because we were all interested in learning more about the topic. Child Labor appealed to our group because we all learned about the industrial revolution in our middle school history class, but we did not learn about the exploitation of children during the time period. We wanted to hear the stories and know about why this happened, but more importantly why it ended. Our topic was chosen from our manifold of questions about the topic and our determination to know more.
Research was conducted based of the essential question. Our essential question was “Why did child labor end in America?” and we basically focused all of our research around this thought. Each source lead to different questions, which we also researched farther. Our final essential question was what we wanted to answer by conducting this research and have proof of our reason. With this research our group was able to represent revolution, reaction and reform.
As a group we were selective of our choice for our Nation History Day documentary. The process we choose in order to select our category of presentation was to first relate our research and topic to an active process that would grab the attention of the audience with an engaging topic. Choosing the presentation category for our documentary was very simple, due to the past research that we provided relating to our National History Day topic. Before starting our documentary, we needed to first come up with what information would be presented throughout out the documentary. Once we determined what information was going to be in the documentary, we then researched different pictures relating to our topic and included them in the video.
Child Labor is directly related to the NHD theme because it entails all three of the ideas. Child Labor is a revolution because it changes the way factories manufactured good, the profit and the time it took to produce goods. Since children worked for lower wages and longer hour companies made higher profits. The factories worked more efficient because they had more people to do the work and they worked for more hours at a time. This caused a higher output of goods. The reaction to child labor was negative because children were occupying jobs and being paid less money. That upset men and families all over America. The reform happened after the Great Depression because the government needed to provide jobs to the 25 percent unemployed adults. To conclude topic of American child labor includes revolution, reaction and reform.
Annotated Bibliography
Primary :
Annotation
This is a political cartoon from 1903, the time period of child labor. The cartoon features working children and Uncle Sam holding a document saying “Land Monopoly system, High Tarrif, Trust Rule”. The parent is telling Uncle Sam about his situation. This source was useful because it showed the feelings about the government through the parents point of view.
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This is a government document written to lower work hours for children. I used this source to show the reform of child labor from the government. This is considered a primary source because it is from the time period.
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A quote from this source was used in the documentary to show how child labor was viewed by people of the time. This is a primary source because it was from the 1915 which is the time period of child labor.
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This source supplies pictures from Lewis Hine photograph portfolio. This source shows the type of labor and it gives a sense of how the children felt about the work. This is a primary source because it has actually photographs from the time period.
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This source includes photographs taken by Lewis Hine in the 1900’s. These photos show the working conditions that the children encountered and the complexity of their jobs. This is a primary source because it includes photographs from the child labor time period.
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This is the act that reformed child labor in America. The act entails the humane conditions that people of American should work under. This is a primary source because it is the actually document from the time period.
<http://www.lewishinephotographs.com/content/addie-card-12-years-spinner-north-pormal-ie-pownal-cotton-mill-vt-girls-mill-say-she-ten-yea>.
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This is the source with the picture of Addie Card, that was used in the documentary, the use of the photograph was to show the children who did these demanding jobs. This is a primary source because it was taken during the time period.
Secondary:
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This source is a summary of child labor and the great depression. This source helped develop the main idea for the documentary.
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This is the Tennessee’s government laws related to child workers. It was a source that showed current laws to the 1900’s conditions. This is a secondary source because it wasn’t from the child labor time period.
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This source supplies pictures from Lewis Hine photograph portfolio and a short biography about him. This source was used to research more about what Lewis did for child labor and how that affected the the end of chid labor.
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This website provides a brief summary of child labor and a timeline of the early reform. Some facts and photographs in this website were used in the documentary. I used this source because it was used to see how the people of the United States reacted to child labor.
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This source was a website that went in depth about the Great Depression. It was used in the paper because the source simplified what was happening making it understandable for the viewer. This is a secondary source because it was written after the time period and not by someone who experienced the situation.
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This website is a summary of child labor and the reason why child labor happened. It was used because it showed how child labor was a revolution. This is a secondary source because it is written after the child labor time period and not by someone who experienced it.
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This was a radio show that found grand children and great grand children of the chridren in Lewis Hine photos. One of the child was Addie Card and it showed how much modern times knew about child labor. This is a secondary source because the audio is from recent times.
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This book gives fact about the amount of children working and interesting data about child labor. This source was usefully to the documentary because it stated numbers that were difficult to find of the Internet.
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This book had stories, quotes and facts about child labor in America. The stories informative because it helps understand what was actually happening in the factories. This book is a secondary source because it is from 3rd person and written after child labor.
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This website is the current Pennsylvania child labor laws. This was to compare the conditions, wages and hour of work now.
http://www.compassion.com/child-advocacy/find-your-voice/quick-facts/child-labor-quick-facts.htm
Annotation
This website was a timeline of the Great Depression. This source was useful because the viewer needed to be informed about the Great Depression. This is a secondary source because the web page was created after the child labor time period and it is written in 3rd person.
Photographs
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/slatermill/6690264669/in/set-72157628852926661/lightbox/>.
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This is a photograph of the Slater Mill, which was used in the documentary. This source is primary because the photo was taken during the child labor time period.
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This source supplies pictures from Lewis Hine photograph portfolio. This source shows the type of labor and it gives a sense of how the children felt about the work. This is a primary source because it has actually photographs from the time period.
This source describes the life of Lilian Walden and provides actual photographs of her. One of these photographs are used in the documentary to show the protest from that time period.
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This websites gives information about current child labr in other parts of the world. The photo was used to show what modern day child slavery looks like, to compliment the words about it.
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This source supplies pictures from Lewis Hine photograph portfolio and the stories of the children. This source shows the type of labor and it gives a sense of how the children felt about the work. This is a primary source because it has actually photographs from the time period.
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This is a photo of a young girl, who is 15 years old. She’s a worker in a mill, and she’s standing in the spinning room.
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This is a photo of 4 young boys in North Carolina. They have each worked in the Dickson mill for a range of years. One boy has worked int he mill for 1 year, while another has worked int he mill for 4 years.
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This is a photo of a girl standing next to a spinner in a mill in Massachusetts.
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This photograph, is of a young girl standing next to a spooler. Her job in this mill, in Massachusetts, is as a spooler tender.
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This photograph, taken in Georgia, is of a group of young men, and boys standing outside during the noon hour.
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This is a photo of a young boy sweeping the floors of the spinning department in a mill. This photo was taken in Massachusetts.
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This is a photo of a young boy, Lewis Emory, standing outside. This photo was taken in South Carolina.
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This photograph, is of a 14 year old boy, standing in the mule room, in the Berkshire Cotton Mill. This was taken in Massachusetts.
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This is a photo of 14 year old Rhea Quintin. Rhea, is making a drawing on a webb frame. This was photographed in Massachusetts.
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This is a photo of a young boy in a spinning room of a mill. This was photographed in Massachusetts.
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This is a photograph of a 15 year old spooler tender in the Berkshire Cotton Mill. This was photographed in Massachusetts.
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Photographed in Georgia, this picture shows two young boys standing on a spinning frame. Their job, was to repair broken threads, and replace empty bobbins.
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This photo, is of a young man, in Massachusetts. In the picture, he is seen operating on a press machine.
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Taken in the Mollahan Mills in South Carolina, this young girl is photographed standing in between two spinners.