Children in the Flower Field

And I should not have to remind you
that little time is given here
to rest on a wayside bench,
to stop and bend to the wildflowers,
or to study a bird on a branch—

–from “The Parade” by Billy Collins

As June builds up to summer’s start, lengthening sunny days mixed with some warm rain bring wildflowers’ sudden shoots and colorful blooms, seemingly overnight. In an instant, fallow fields, meadows, and roadside rights-of-way are flower-filled. This same recipe of sunshine and rain brings forth insects as well, some that prey on humans – black flies, mosquitoes, sweat bees – and some that make for good stalking – dragonflies, fireflies, June bugs. The 1904 photograph below of Quentin Roosevelt, the youngest child of Theodore and Edith, epitomizes this time of year for me as he’s intently engaged in June bug hunting amidst a meadow full of daisies (or Black-Eyed Susans, perhaps?) on the grounds of Sagamore Hill, the family’s Long Island home:

The contemporaneous stereograph view below of an unidentified toddler and unnamed collie shown in a similar wildflower-filled field is a 1905 copyright image. For me, this picture of child and dog in a meadow abloom evokes idyllic moments I’ve experienced as a boy and twice more decades later as a father of a son and a daughter:

The four Lewis Hine photographs below show children in a vastly different floral field: the 1908 New York City home-based family business making artificial flowers at a whopping 8 cents a gross shown at the top, left; and, the three other photos, from 1917, shot inside the Boston Floral Supply Co. factory as youths work at various tasks of florifacture, the flower manufacturing processes:

Artificial flower making at 8 cents a gross. Youngest child working is 5 years old, New York, New York. Photograph by Lewis W. Hine, January 1908. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/nclc.04073	Mary Donahue, 15 years old (on right of photo), curling petals, … Pauline Steele, 15 years old (on Mary’s right) makes carnations. Beatrice Sicco, 15 years old (left side of photo), curling, Boston, Mass. Photograph by Lewis W. Hine, 29 January 1917. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/nclc.05163
Corrinne Le May, 15 years old, bunching sweet peas at the Boston Floral Supply Co., Boston, Mass. Photograph by Lewis W. Hine, 29 January 1917. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/nclc.05162	15-year old boy sorting cycas leaves, Boston Floral Supply Co., Boston, Mass. Photograph by Lewis W. Hine, 29 January 1917. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/nclc.05195

Hine’s photographs for the National Child Labor Committee illuminate a grimmer early 20th century phenomenon of children up-to-their-elbows in flowers.

Learn More View 32 photographs taken on the grounds of President Theodore Roosevelt’s home Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York. TR and Edith’s children are pictured at play by Edward S. Curtis, noted photographer and ethnographer of the twenty-volume series The North American Indian. And, a 2013 blog post marking Arbor Day includes a Curtis photo of Quentin planting a tree. See more than 50 Lewis Hine photographs documenting children working in various aspects of the early 20th century flower trade and industry produced for the National Child Labor Committee. Inhale some 80 pictures featuring children and flowers from within the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. A primary school in the field. Photograph by France Benjamin Johnston, 1900. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c38995

Dandelions. Photograph by Ema Spencer, circa 1900. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3f05983