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January 1912. "Tenement homework, New York, 309 W. 146th Street. Mrs. De Levo [?] and her 7-year-old daughter, Lorenza, embroidering ladies' waists in their dirty kitchen-living room. Lorenza makes the stems of the flowers. Her mother said, 'See how smart she is. I show her how and right away she makes them. She is so little because she's been sick so much.' She works after school. Father is out of a job. 'They pay too cheap for lace.' Said they make about $2 a week." Glass negative by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee. View full size.
The building, that is; I suspect mom and the kids have moved on.
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If you live in/near NYC or are visiting the city consider a trip to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. They have a tenement building that looks every bit as bad as this photo.
Several tenement apartments are set up to represent the Jewish immigrants from the turn of the century, later Italian immigrants and so forth. It's sobering.
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