Child Bakers Feeding Boston’s Italian North End District
Child labor wasn’t limited to tenement-based piecework, dangerous, heavy labor, and agriculture. Children also took on more service-based jobs that may not have been as physically dangerous, but still put them in an adult role. Despite the deteriorating conditions in Boston’s North End, and a clear anti-Italian sentiment, the Italian population exploded, from 14,000 in 1900 to 37,000 by 1920.
In Hine’s photograph, the Messina brothers, Vincenzo (15) and Angelo (11) bake bread for their father’s bakery in Boston’s North End, providing fresh baked goods for the district’s Italian settlers. Vincenzo works a twelve-hour shift, from five PM to five AM, after having worked the day shift. Angelo tends the store and assists with baking. The bakery still stands today, in a prime location behind the Old North Church gift shop. It has been renovated into apartment units, covering its sordid history of child labor.
