Cotton Mill Workers in Mobile

Workers at Mobile's Barker Cotton Mills pose for photographer Lewis Hine in October 1914. Hine was hired by the National Child Labor Committee to document working and living conditions of laborers in the United States in 1908 and capture thousands of photos by the time he completed his work in 1924. Mobile and other cities were destinations for poor agricultural workers seeking work in industry following the Civil War.

Group of textile mill workers, all young women, posed inside a cotton mill between rows of machinery.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress; photograph by Lewis Hine
Group of textile mill workers, all young women, posed inside a cotton mill between rows of machinery.