Luther Watson, of Corinth, KY, 14 years old, Dec. 30, 1906, right arm was cut off by a veneering saw in a box factory (in Cincinnati) on Nov. 14, 1907. He used a board to throp belt operating (saw as there) was no apparatus to do this. Now attending school. Mother intends to give him an education “so’s he won’t have to work.” Nov. 1907, Lewis Hine. -Courtesy of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County

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According to an Ohio forestry pamphlet, published in the early 1900s, there were four bung factories in operation at that time in Cincinnati: American Bung Mfg. Co, National Bung Mfg Co, Queen City Bung Mfg, and United States Bung Mfg. Co. A bung is a device used to seal a container, such as a barrel. One of these companies, which also made boxes, employed a young man named Luther Watson, who lived across the Ohio River, in Kentucky.

In 1907, Lewis Hine was assigned to take photographs of life among industrial workers in Pittsburgh, for The Survey, a magazine that promoted social reform. Because he did not begin his 32-state journey to photograph child labor until 1908, it is not clear why Hine would have been in Kentucky of that year. The photo is in the collection at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, but does not appear in the Library of Congress collection obtained from the National Child Labor Committee.

When Luther Watson was injured, there were no workers' compensation laws in the USA. The first compensation system in America was proposed by President Taft, and enacted in 1908, but applied only to companies involved in interstate trade. In 1911, the Ohio General Assembly passed the state's first workers' compensation law, although astonishingly, it was voluntary and funded by the state. So in 1907, Luther was forced to face life without one arm, and his parents were presumably saddled with the medical bills. No wonder Hine became such a passionate proponent of child labor laws, having witnessed this incident even before his celebrated work started.

I found Luther in the 1920 census. He was living in Covington, Kentucky, with his wife and two girls. His occupation was listed as a telegraph messenger. In the 1930 census, he was listed as living in Elsmere, Kentucky, with two additional girls, and he was employed as a switch tender for the railroad. I also found his 1961 Kentucky death record, but I was unable to obtain his obituary.

Since all his children were girls, and I didn't know their married names, I was stumped as to how to locate any of his descendants. So I Googled him. Miraculously, I found a photograph of Luther on a website posted by his great-granddaughter, Lisa Hinkle. There he was, in 1938, standing with his wife and two grandchildren. He still had one arm.