The Lewis Hine Project

We received an email introducing MGS to The Lewis Hine Project, by historian and author Joseph Manning.

Lewis Hine was an investigative photographer, employed by the National Child Labor Committee 1908-19234. Hine's documentation of child workers includes more than 5,100 photographs which are now part of the Library of Congress' American Memory Project, which can be accessed at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/nclchtml/nclcback.html.

Mr. Manning, asking himself "Didn't history happen to ordinary people, too?", began The Lewis Hines Project to research and document the lives of the children appearing in Hine's photographs, "whose only public persona, for as long as a hundred years, has been a simple snapshot." More information about The Lewis Hine Project is online at: http://www.morningsonmaplestreet.com/aboutlewishine2.html.

Mr. Manning's story of Pheobe Thomas, a child worker in a sardine cannery at Eastport, Maine, whom Lewis Hine photographed in 1911, begins at http://www.morningsonmaplestreet.com/phoebethomas1.html.

As part of Phoebe's story, Mr. Manning included Stephen Robbins' 1976 interview with Minerva (Sharman) Gray, who describes her work in a Robbinston, Maine, sardine cannery and the working conditions in the 1910s. Stephen Robbins' interview with Minerva begins on page 7 (http://www.sevensteeples.com/phoebethomas7.html).