Jo Bodeon. A “Back-Roper” in the Mule Room, Chace Cotton Mills, Burlington, Vermont

Trained as a sociologist and recognizing the power of photography to sway public opinion and to create social change, Lewis Hine gave up his teaching job in 1908 and went to work full time as a photographer for the recently formed National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). His photographs of young children working on the street and in fields, factories, mills, and mines were reproduced in pamphlets and display materials of the NCLC and helped raise awareness of the plight of child workers, eventually leading to protective legislation. The wide-eyed Jo Bodeon was one of many children that Hine found tending the gargantuan, cacophonous spinning mules of cotton mills up and down the East Coast.