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Child Labor Reform Stamp

Of Interest

This postage stamp bears a picture of a little girl identified as Addie Laird. It was taken by the noted photographer of child labor conditions, Louis Wickes Hine. The title of the original photograph is Anemic Little Spinner in North Pownal Cotton Mill, North Pownal, Vermont, August 1910. The accompanying caption, from the records of the National Child Labor Committee, reads:

Addie Laird, 12 years, spinner in North Pownal cotton mill, North Pownal, Vermont. Girls in mill say she is ten years. She admitted to me she was twelve; that she started during school vacation and now would "stay".
-witness E.F. Brown.

The U.S. Postal Service issued this first stamp to commemorate Child Labor Reform in 1998; it was unveiled in January of that year by Secretary of Labor Alexis M. Herman. The Postal Service presented the DOL Library with a framed enlargement of the stamp in acknowledgment of the Library's participation in the unveiling ceremonies with exhibits and bibliographies on child labor. It remains on permanent display in the Library.

For more background on Addie, go to http://www.elizabethwinthrop.com/searchforaddie.html.