The Roanoker - September / October 2018 - 27

ten-year-old boys at a cigarette factory in Danville, Virginia.
Hine spent seven years and took over 5,000 images of child
workers, often taking a photograph of a single child, their
eyes staring blankly at his camera.
Regardless of the nature of their work, the lives of Hine's
subjects were much the same. Six-day work weeks, twelve to
fourteen hour days, squalid living conditions and no chance
for an education. Their substandard wages hardly equaled the
manual, sometimes crippling, labor the children performed. The
child laborer was expendable, and many died of work-related
injuries or disease due to the lack of sanitary living conditions.
Hine captured the underbelly of American industry, what
politicians at all levels had willfully chosen to ignore by failing
to legislate the slightest regulation against the use of children.
The child-laborers of Roanoke's cotton mill in Norwich
were no exception. Mamie Witt, 12, had worked in the
Roanoke Cotton Mill for a few years, the oldest of five
children. Walking to work from her family's house in
Norwich, she worked six days a week, twelve to fourteen
hours a day as a spinner. With little education, her meager
wages helped support the family. Ronald Webb lived near
Mamie and was a doffer in the mill. He, too, was 12. And
there was Frank Robinson, age seven, a doffer and sweeper.
Mamie, Ronald and Frank were part of an invisible group,
sharing bedrooms with siblings in cramped company-built
mill houses in Norwich, a section located on the south side
of the Roanoke River just beyond the pre-annexation bounds
of Roanoke City. Norwich had been named for the Norwich
Lock Company, a short-lived enterprise that had established
a presence there in 1891. The cotton mill moved into the
abandoned lock company's brick structure in 1901.
In the January 31, 1907, edition of the American Wool
and Cotton Reporter appeared a description of the mill. "The
mill is pleasantly located on the banks of the Roanoke River
between two low lying hills...The mill is the pioneer twine
mill of Virginia. The company recently began the manufacture
of polished twine. This is the only mill situated in the gateway
of southwestern Virginia." According to the report, the mill
was producing one-to 30-ply cotton of any color that could be
put up on cones, tubes, skeins or balls. The two-story structure
with skylights was under the "clever management" of T.J.
McNeely. The Reporter concluded with a rather skewed view
of the workers and their condition. "It is no wonder that
this mill has been successfully operated and that its force of
intelligent operatives gathered from the nearby mountain
regions are perfectly satisfied with their lot."

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Hine's images a few years later captured something quite
different. And never mind that in 1902, there were calls to
investigate the cotton mill for labor abuses of the women
and children working there.
Hine took a dozen known images, and for a few of
them, Mamie, Ronald and Frank were his subjects. Hine
photographed Frank with his broom and straw hat alongside
Ronald. The barefoot boys stare back at Hine, perhaps having
their photograph taken for the very first time. Mamie is
shown next to the spinning machine. Dressed in a draped
cotton shirt, her tired eyes glance to the side.
For many of the dozen images Hine took at the Roanoke
Cotton Mill he provided a brief description of his subject
matter conveying a sense of what he found.
"I counted seven apparently under the age of 14 and
three under 12 years old," Hine wrote of a photograph of a
group of boys working as doffers and spinners.
"She is 12 years old and helps support an able-bodied,
dependent father."
"Said 14 years old, but it is doubtful."
Hine took an image of a family standing on their back
porch and wrote, "He is apparently working on the railroad
but his three oldest children (oldest being 12) work in the
Roanoke Cotton Mill...House is poorly kept. Mother would
not be in photo."
After spending a day in Roanoke, Hine kept moving and
eventually handed over his collection of 5,000 images to
the NCLC for their ongoing efforts to abolish child labor
in the United States.
Those efforts would ultimately prove fruitful but too late
for Mamie, Ronald and Frank. By the time child labor was
legally abolished by Congress in 1938, Mamie and Ronald
were 39 and Frank was 34. For 20 more years after Hine
visited Roanoke, child laborers were used at the cotton
mill, diminishing only in the mid-'30s when desperate
Depression-era men needed work. I

LEFT

Young Spooler
An unidentified
young spooler
at the Norwich
cotton mill.
ABOVE

Doffers and
Spinners
Hine wrote on
back of the
photo, "I counted
seven apparently
under fourteen
and three under
twelve years old."
BELOW

Norwich
Cotton Mill
Hine wrote on
reverse of the
photo, "Houses
run down and not
well kept."

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

27
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