Sure a little kid would probably be better off in school than working 13-hour days as a messenger while smoking a pipe, but damn if this kid isn’t the biggest bad ass I’ve ever seen on a bike.
Photojournalist Lewis Hine played an integral role in the creation of child labor laws in America. Hine took a post with the National Child Labor Committee in 1908 and spent the next ten years documenting child laborers and their working conditions around America. Though real child labor reform didn’t come about until 1938 (thanks as much to the Great Depression as anything) Hine’s photos nonetheless helped show America the destitute, exploitative conditions in which young children were forced to work.