In American Photography and the American Dream, author James Guimond tells of Lewis Hine's encounter with a Mississippi factory owner, who said to Hine: "We don't want them (the child labor reformers) to know about this because they would not understand that it is better for these low people to be at work. They don't want school. The children who grow up and can't read and write are always better off than those who can, because as soon as they get a smattering of education they want to strike for higher wages."

In 1911, in a moment of frustration, Hine was quoted as saying, "I am sometimes inclined to think that we must mutilate these infants in industry before the shame of it can be driven home."

It's been a century since Richard Mills was depicted as a compelling example of child labor. But for most people who happen to see his picture now, it will likely be just another of over 5,000 such photographs that were taken by Lewis Hine in 32 states and the District of Columbia. But for Richard Mills Jr., it was a totally unexpected link to his past when I mailed it to him, along with two others in which his father appeared, with the bandage on his finger. They are the only pictures he has ever seen of his father as a child.

Group of cutters, all of them working, factory #2. One of them, not the youngest, is Harold Whalen, 14 Tappen Ave. Makes $1.00 a day. Location: Eastport, Maine, August 1911, Lewis Hine.