"I don't think we should have felt sorry for them, but I do think they needed help. What Hine was doing was trying to get the laws changed so life would be better for them. He must have worked pretty hard to make things better for people. I wish their life had been better, but we came along in another generation, and my brother and I have done well." -Billia Campbell Moore, daughter of Nell Hazel

"I was shocked that they looked so poor. But then, I knew they were stripping tobacco in their work clothes. I have a picture of my grandmother and grandfather, and they are wearing nice clothes. I know that they owned their farm." -Jean Davidson, daughter of Bessie Hazel (not shown in photos)

"She had a gracious smile. All the kids said Ruth was so pretty when she was growing up. -Richard Smith, son of Ruth Hazel

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At the National Child Labor Committee's Sixth Annual Conference, held at Boston in 1910, there was a presentation by Frank S. Drown, Chief Statistician for the Labor Division of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics. In his closing remarks, he quoted from a speech made the year before by E. Dana Durand, Director of the United States Census.

"In connection with the changes made in the population schedule with reference to the return of occupations, attention may be called to the changes in the instructions with regard to reporting the gainful occupations of children. The widespread agitation as to child labor makes it desirable that the statistics on this subject should be placed on a more scientific basis than has been done in past censuses. Important as it is that the abuses of child labor should be done away with, it is nevertheless essential that the extent of child labor in this country should not be exaggerated. The danger of such exaggeration arises principally in connection with those children who work for their own parents. A very large proportion of the children of the country, and particularly of the children of farmers, are employed more or less of the time outside of school hours and during school vacations in assisting their parents on the farm, in the shop or store or in housework. To distinguish between those whose employment in such a way is sufficiently extensive to justify reporting them as having a gainful occupation, and those whose work is too unimportant or discontinuous to justify classifying them as gainful workers, is very difficult. It seemed desirable to adopt a somewhat arbitrary rule and to instruct enumerators to report children who work for their parents as gainfully occupied only in case they work for at least half of the year. This instruction may possibly result in reducing the number of children reported as gainfully occupied, though this is by no means certain; but it seems far better to have a definite basis for classification than to leave it, under vague instructions, to the variable judgment of enumerators."

"I may also note that in the case of children who work for their parents on farms, which is perhaps the most common form of child labor, we will instruct the enumerators to designate them as 'farm laborers, home farm,' in order to distinguish them from those who work for other employers, who will be designated as 'working out.'"

The above photographs are two of five that were taken of this family by Lewis Hine. I was struck by how much they reminded me of the Depression-era photos by Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. The tall woman in the middle of the top photo caught my eye. She looked so weary. Several weeks later, when I had tracked down living descendants, I was shocked to learn that she was only 14 years old at the time.

In his caption Hine expressed concern about the children not going to school ("Children have not been to school this year although living within 1 1/2 miles of school"). According to many reliable sources, tobacco stripping in Kentucky takes place mostly in November, so it is obvious that the reason the children were not attending school was so they could help their family at a critical time of the season, a long-standing tradition in farming towns.

When I began my search, I thought I found the family in the 1900 and 1910 census, listed as James and Angie "Haysell" and a total of nine children. They owned a farm in Stallard Springs, Warren County, Kentucky, a rural census district near Bowling Green. But I couldn't find anything else of value after 1920, so I decided to contact the newspaper in Bowling Green to see if they would be interested in publishing the top photo to see if anyone recognized the family. A reporter for the Bowling Green Daily News, Alyssa Harvey, was interested right away. She interviewed me, and soon after, an article appeared.

One day later, I received an email from Charles Curtis, a great-grandson of the father in the photograph, James Hazel. He has been compiling the family’s history for many years. He included portions of the family tree, and also got me in touch with Billia Campbell Moore, daughter of Nell Hazel (the tall girl), Jean Davidson, daughter of Bessie Hazel, and Rick Smith, son of Ruth Hazel (the baby in the photo). Several months later, another article appeared.