Dinner-toters at the Riverside and Dan River Cotton Mills

Two girls carrying dinner baskets to mill workers at the Riverside and Dan River Cotton Mills in Danville pose beneath an umbrella for a photographic portrait by Lewis Hine. One of the girls, donning a straw hat, walks barefoot along the dirt pathway. According to Hine, "the Sup[erintendent] of Schools and teachers in Danville said that many children toted dinners and did nothing else, not even attending school." Hine, a photographer working for the National Child Labor Committee in the 1910s, visited the mills in June 1911, as part of his photographic investigation into child labor in United States industry.