Those are some hard eyes. Seven years old going on 40.
I’m sure through grit and hard work they managed to get rich in later life.
It’s likely their pain ended much sooner
the most loyal and obedient slaves are the slaves who think they’re free
Some LinkedIn lunatic has probably used this image for their daily motivational post.
Brought to you by: Project2025
yeah not gonna be “old” days for long. they’ve already started laxing restrictions on several states.
Kentucky just allowed 12 year olds to work for nonprofits 18 hours a week.
Exploitation begins at home!
the ferengi would be so proud of our civilization
Is this back when America was great?
These kids are draining the swamp.
Using their bare hands as shovels from what it looks like
We educate our youth, supposedly so they can contribute to society. In tribal life, if your father hunted he took you along and taught you how to hunt, or if your mother made baskets she taught you to make baskets. So in a weird way, child labor is just capitalisms extension to that model.
Teaching children useful survival skills in a subsistence hunter gatherer society - woke
Teaching children to operate machinery in order to make higher profits for robber baron capitalists - broke
Now this is pro life!
What has happened to their hands?
Unsure if AI image, or product of horrific work environment…
not a.i. … check the comment from @hoch
Didn’t even notice that at first. All I could see were the thousand-yard stares
If it isn’t AI (geeze have to question everything now), I would hazard a guess that it could be various injuries from textile machines or something.
It could also be just standard “major ouchies incurred as children” but grew back oddly due to lack of access to medical care.
This image has been around a long time, it’s not AI. The girls are (IIRC) oyster shuckers. So hand injuries are gonna be a thing.
I actually know a bit of backstory about this photo - it was a series on child labor in the south, and these are photos of oyster shuckers for the Maggioni Canning Co. around 1912.
I’m assuming shucking oysters are rough on the hands, so it could be wounds, but it also looks like crusted-on dirt, so I’m not sure.
Here’s another photo where you can see their hands a bit better:
I just wanted to add about the stares. Photos back then required the target to be very still ao they are just probably trying their best to keep still.
Most photos of children failed because they moved. These were very still, hence the tension in their eyes, or just a lucky shot. Anyways, photos from way back always look like death for this reason.
Reminds me of the grim (or beautiful, depending on how you look at it) practice of photographing the deceased, especially children, during the Victorian era. Dressed up and posed, sometimes with living family in the same photo. Part of the reason being the exact fact that they wouldn’t move during the shot.
This is a hilarious photo of they weren’t in such conditions.
“The real cause of poverty is too much labor regulation!”
Serves them right for not forming a union.
Jesus, the state of those dresses. I hope those are “work” clothes, but have a very bad feeling that’s their only clothes.
The children yearn for the mines.
Mining in particular was the beginning of a lot of unionization movements. People tend to think of hisroiv mining right leaning but they were pretty hard left and pushed hard to worker rights. Mining now is much more right leaning, which is pretty unfortunate.
https://open.spotify.com/track/4abZVfTVIKhVKazN3j6ROU?si=3uUp0ERfQ2eTzXv-oFk-Eg
Right leaning tends to happen over time as a generation or two forgets about how bad things used to be for them.
The recent EU elections are a pretty good reminder of this
