Sand and Sea: The Children of the Canneries

In the early 1900s, migrant workers in the United States included entire families. They worked Midwestern farms and fields throughout the summer and fall, picking crops and cotton. As the bitter winter winds swept across the country, they sought jobs in the oyster canneries of the Carolinas which boasted a milder climate. Every family member worked—the men and older boys in the cannery factories, and the women and younger children in the shucking sheds. The canneries provided shelter to these families in the form of ramshackle, one-room wooden cabins, offering a bleak refuge against the elements. Working dawn to dusk, they lived on the bare edge of poverty. It was a hard life under horrible conditions, but for so many it was their only chance to survive the winter. (Original images courtesy Library of Congress.)