Historic Alabama: Young Workers

Photographer Lewis Wickes Hine documented young workers at the Alabama Canning Company in 1911

In 1911, photographer Lewis Wickes Hine documented young workers at the Alabama Canning Company for the National Child Labor Committee. The small boy on the floor, according to the Library of Congress, is 8-year-old Johnnie Schraker, who was earning 45 cents a day and had been working at the cannery for three years.

This article appears in the April 2026 issue of Business Alabama.