According to Child Labor in the American South (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), the Crescent Hosiery Mill opened in Scotland Neck in 1902. Being without electricity, the mill powered its knitting machines by a steam engine. Many girls were employed as loopers. They operated a machine in order to sew shut the opening in the toe of the stockings. They were often paid by the number of stockings they completed and not by the number of hours worked. Most of the children had an 11-hour workday.

In both North and South Carolina, the child labor law prohibited children under twelve from working, but enforcement of the law was rare. In the early 1900s, it is estimated that the textile mills in North Carolina and South Carolina employed roughly half of all child laborers in the United States. Nannie was one of them.

Two things immediately struck me about this photograph. One was the high degree of concentration exhibited by little Nannie, as if she were completely undisturbed by Hine's presence and his large view camera. As I have discovered in many cases in this project, the photographer somehow captured a personality trait in Nannie that would last far into adulthood. The above comments by Nannie's daughter and granddaughter attest to that.

The other thing that stood out is how well this picture demonstrates Hine's respect for children, and for the dignity of work. Hine was known to have been critical of his famous photojournalist predecessor Jacob Riis, whose depiction of squalor in the New York City slums in the 1880s appeared in his book "How the Other Half Lives," and led to a public outcry for better living conditions in the city. Hine felt that the graphic images of dirty children sleeping in alleys, and similar types of photos, perpetuated the stereotype that newer immigrants were undesirable and undeserving. For the most part, Hine portrayed his subjects in ways that persuaded the influential middle and professional classes that the child laborers were pretty much like their children, not ignorant and unworthy.

My search for Nannie's descendants didn't take very long. I found her death certificate immediately in the North Carolina Death Index, posted on Ancestry.com. Her maiden name was included. Then I found her in the census, first as a child, then as Nannie Felton, her married name, with some of her children listed (1930), one of them named Violet. Later I noticed a Mrs. Willie Harrell listed on Nannie's death certificate as the informant, and she turned out to be Violet Harrell. I subsequently found her listed in the Internet White Pages, and so I called her. Wiithin days, she had the photo of her mother. I interviewed her and her own daughter, Libby Taylor, Nannie's granddaughter.

Nannie Coleson was born in North Carolina, on September 20, 1902, to John Coleson and Leah (Overton). They married about 1883 and had at least 12 children, three of which died before 1910. The Colesons were farmers. John died in 1931, at the age of 66; Leah died in 1936, at the age of 69. In 1922, Nannie married Leonidas Polk Felton.