Photo of the Day

Seventy-five canneries dotted Maine’s eastern coastline in 1900,

producing canned sardines which were shipped across the nation.

The work was seasonal, with intense periods coming in the fall

which required many unskilled workers willing to work long hours.

Rural families, then at the end of the fall harvest season,

were recruited for this work;

and entire families took these jobs,

in keeping with the rural tradition that everyone, including children,

contribute to the family’s economic well-being,

even if that meant missing school.

The seasonal nature of the work exempted canneries

from Maine’s restrictions on child labor;

and children as young as five worked in these places,

sometimes in bare feet,

using long knives to cut off the heads of sardines,

while other children packed them in tins and filled shipping cartons.

Accidental cuts and finger amputations were commonplace.

While we recoil at the obvious dangers involved

in asking children to do this work,

there was another, insidious harm going on here.

When children were working, they were not in school.

But the money they brought home helped their families.

Often, the parents of these children

had been child workers, too.

So, they tended to see nothing wrong with the practice.

They knew no other way.

But the failure of these children to get an education

trapped them in the marginal life of their parents,

perpetuating an inter-generational cycle of poverty.

And society as a whole suffered

with the failure of whole communities to advance.

Indiana glass factory.

Asking these Maine parents not to send their children off to work in the

canneries would have imposed an economic hardship on them.

Oklahoma cotton field.

And this dilemma illustrates a common problem with enacting

progressive solutions for difficult problems.

Shrimp picker, Mississippi.

Fixing them often requires a willingness to make short-term sacrifices

on the belief that, in the long run,

society as a whole will reap benefits.

But when a society defines ‘the future’ as ‘this weekend’

and feels little responsibility to future generations,

their leaders will make the wrong judgment call on difficult questions.

Every time.

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I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda

Banner image: cutters in a Maine canning factory, ranging in age from 7to 12. All of the photos presented here were taken by Lewis Hine.