Some LinkedIn lunatic has probably used this image for their daily motivational post.
Mining in particular was the beginning of a lot of unionization movements. People tend to think of hisroiv mining right leaning but they were pretty hard left and pushed hard to worker rights. Mining now is much more right leaning, which is pretty unfortunate.
https://open.spotify.com/track/4abZVfTVIKhVKazN3j6ROU?si=3uUp0ERfQ2eTzXv-oFk-Eg
Right leaning tends to happen over time as a generation or two forgets about how bad things used to be for them.
In late USSR miners were one of the most active strata. Pretty left. One can say, the only clearly left of that time's protesters, because, well, around 1988 the general public in USSR was fed up with left ideologies.
See this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel_of_Oligarchy (it's not too shit, from the eyes of Communists trying to find themselves a place in the society that is over them). EDIT: It's an illustration to "fed up", not to late USSR.
"Too much labor regulation" is one of the causes of poverty. Definitely not the main one, though, and there's "too little labor regulation" somewhere as well on that list.
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I actually know a bit of backstory about this photo - it was a series on child labor in the south, and these are photos of oyster shuckers for the Maggioni Canning Co. around 1911.
I'm assuming shucking oysters are rough on the hands, so it could be wounds, but it also looks like crusted-on dirt, so I'm not sure.
Here's another photo where you can see their hands a bit better:
And here's the original untouched photo:
I just wanted to add about the stares. Photos back then required the target to be very still ao they are just probably trying their best to keep still.
Most photos of children failed because they moved. These were very still, hence the tension in their eyes, or just a lucky shot. Anyways, photos from way back always look like death for this reason.
Reminds me of the grim (or beautiful, depending on how you look at it) practice of photographing the deceased, especially children, during the Victorian era. Dressed up and posed, sometimes with living family in the same photo. Part of the reason being the exact fact that they wouldn't move during the shot.
If it isn't AI (geeze have to question everything now), I would hazard a guess that it could be various injuries from textile machines or something.
It could also be just standard "major ouchies incurred as children" but grew back oddly due to lack of access to medical care.
This image has been around a long time, it’s not AI. The girls are (IIRC) oyster shuckers. So hand injuries are gonna be a thing.
Enlightening! Thanks for taking the time and sharing what you found! I'll be sure to give that a read. Very much appreciated. :)
Jesus, the state of those dresses. I hope those are "work" clothes, but have a very bad feeling that's their only clothes.
For late XIX'th century working class those would be their only clothes usually.
EDIT: Putting this in contrast with photos of the inhabitants of the valley my ancestors from paternal side are from (which were mostly all murdered in 1915), I can see from where all the pride about that place came and also envy of the surrounding Muslims and the particular word it was renamed into Turkish (something like "mansions"). In terms of clothes being clean and whole those photos look amazing, and many-story stone houses and such. Just not as amazing when looking at them from XXI-century city perspective.
We educate our youth, supposedly so they can contribute to society. In tribal life, if your father hunted he took you along and taught you how to hunt, or if your mother made baskets she taught you to make baskets. So in a weird way, child labor is just capitalisms extension to that model.
Teaching children useful survival skills in a subsistence hunter gatherer society - woke
Teaching children to operate machinery in order to make higher profits for robber baron capitalists - broke
Oh I’m not saying it’s right. (Though the votes on that post reflect the readers’ capability of understanding nuance.) but it took steps even before we got to capitalism. Those pyramids didn’t build themselves.