Women's History Month

 The Smithsonian has released an exhibition titled, Girlhood.

Work

"Girls' work gave other women leisure time, they made industries more profitable, their cheap labor sparked a consumer revolution, and their activism reshaped labor laws.  Through their labor and activism, they made workplaces safer for everyone."

Some girls lost their girlhood, their childhood, because they had to work.

Especially African-Americans, who were also the property of the children they cared for.

Photos such as this were popular as it showed the family's wealth to have a young black girl.  

Young girls worked in factories as bobbin girls, or spinners.  They ran machines that twisted fiber into yarn, replacing full bobbins with empty ones.

Young girls helped skilled women workers to produce this silk.

In 1913, women from the Henry Doherty Silk Mill went on strike.  Within a week it had spread across New Jersey.  Girls joined their elders in the protest.

But it was the "Radium Girls" who helped to establish new laws to protect workers, when they sued their employer for radium poisoning.  They had been painting watch face dials with the radioactive material so it would glow at night.

"The method of pointing the brush with the lips was taught us, to give the brush an exceedingly fine point....none of us knew that paint paste was dangerous...we were only girls, 15, 17, 19 years old."

Agriculture was exempt from the child labor laws of 1938.

Even now, half a million children harvest a quarter of our crops.

Monica Camacho shared her sweatshirt with the museum, stating "It was just super hot because we had to wear...protective clothes like sweaters so the chemicals or sun doesn't hit you."

Smithsonian