Through the mill

She leans casually on the spinning machine, staring at the camera and wearing a dirty work clothes. Her * * * feet, tread very steadily, covered with black grease. Her left arm is easy to lean against the huge machine, but it is bent at a strange angle, as if a bone is broken and will never be put away. In order to prevent her hair from being caught by hungry people, she pulled her hair tightly and pinned it in a way suitable for adult women. There are some hooligans floating around her head like auras. The elements on her face seem to be completely in proportion: a slender nose, small curled ears, curved lips and swollen cheeks. She is a painter's dream. Or a photographer's < P >. Four years ago, I first saw her at an exhibition dedicated to taking photos of child labor in Vermont for Lewis Hein. The National Child Labor Committee hired Hain to provide documentary photos for its written report. Records show that he is a tourist. From 198 to 1918, he traveled all over the country by train and car, and the photos he took made people understand the cruel reality of child labor. Because of Heine, the American middle class was forced to watch children embroider in airless apartments in new york's Lower East Side, sell newspapers in the crowded streets of St. Louis and cut sardines in Donggang, Maine. He walked into the mines in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where the flashing magnesium light from a hole boy's dirty eyes lit up a dark, airless landscape. In order to back up his photos, Hain scribbled down the details in the notebook in his pocket. About this Vermont girl with sad eyes, he wrote: "A little spinning worker with anemia in a cotton mill in North Ponar."

Heine took some photos one day in August 191, but the image of the girl named Eddie Laird is enduring. Who is she? Lewis Hein once said that he was "more interested in people than people", and so was the novelist. Although I don't know what happened to the child, I decided to imagine a life for her. After I finished writing the novel about Eddie, I began to look for her myself.

I have almost no hope; In 1998, the US Postal Service couldn't find her, when officials there put Eddie's photo on a 32-cent stamp. But it turns out that they don't seem serious enough.

I found her in the 191 census, when I wanted to put "Adelaide" and any logical variants into the database search form. On May 4th, 191, on Form 12B in Bennington County, Vermont, a census taker recorded a Mrs. Adalaide Harris, who was listed as the head of six orphans or abandoned grandchildren, including the Card sisters: Anna, female, white, 14 years old, single; Eddie, female, white, 12 years old, single.

so Addie's name is not Laird, but Card. This clue made researcher Joe Manning and I walk along a winding path, passing through the death records of town offices, dusty historical society, funeral homes and social security departments.

Hein's young spinner lives on the dark side of the American dream, according to records and relatives. Her mother died of peritonitis when she was 2 years old. At the age of eight, she was assigned to work in the mill. (She had to stand on the soapbox to get to the spool.) She changed her name to Pat, got married twice and was unhappy both times. A few months after losing custody of her own daughter in 1925, she adopted another girl, the newborn illegitimate child of a Portuguese sailor. Mother and daughter often move from the dreary mill town in upstate New York to the big city, and Eddie and his friends are photographed in a studio of European victory in Zhang Qingzhu. Recently, Manning and I met Eddie's two adopted sons. We know that when she died at the age of 94, she lived in a low-rise house and lived on social security. ""She had nothing to give, but she did, "Dean Pipola, her great granddaughter, told us that I couldn't imagine my life without Grandma Pat's guidance.

Eddie never knew that her face would end up in a Reebok advertisement or a 1-pound stamp. A few years after she was born, or Heine's glass negatives were in the Library of Congress. Eddie Karaoui never knew she had the symbol of bee.

Like the subject of many of his photos, Lewis Hein also died of poverty. In 193s, his works began to dry up, and he was regarded as rigid and difficult. The efforts of friends, such as fellow photographer Berenice Abbott, revived his career failure. On November 3, 194, he died at the age of 66. He was a widower and his rent was paid by a friend.

Like Eddie, Hein seems to have gradually disappeared into the fog of history. But his image of child labor ensured his reputation as a documentary and an artist. We went back to Adi's photos again and again, because Heine not only regarded her as a symbol, but also regarded her as a "person" with a life beyond the mill. Because of this, the "anemic little spinner" is still as firmly imprinted in our national memory as it was engraved on Heine's negative glass a century ago.

Elizabeth winthrop is the author of Relying on Grace, which is based on Eddie Card's Lewis Hayne photo.