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That October day in 1912 may have been the most eventful yet in the life of Luther Perdue, a 9-year-old High Point mill worker.

He got his picture taken.

The encounter occurred outside the High Point Hosiery Mill where Luther had worked — illegally — for six months.

A man named Lewis W. Hine, who carried a Graflex camera, stopped him on the street and began asking him questions — his name, his age, where he lived, how long he had worked at the mill, what he did there and how much he made.

And what about a photograph?

For the occasion, Luther wore a tattered cap, a jacket held together by a safety pin and a grim expression.

“Works all day now, making about $3 a week,” Hine wrote in the caption of Luther’s photos. “Said he expects to go to school later.”

Thanks to Hine’s photos, Luther Perdue would become a symbol of a national dilemma.

And Hine would become known as the father of American photojournalism.

Forty of Hine’s images have been assembled in an exhibit that will run for the next year at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh.

Historians say the pictures captured a generation of youngsters at the start of the 20th century who forfeited their youth.

“(They) have been condemned for life, with few exceptions, to an unskilled trade, in which there is not hope for advancement,” A.J. McKelway, a North Carolina minister and child labor foe, wrote in 1909. “(They) have been deprived of all opportunity for an education ... (and) have been embittered by the robbery of their childhood.”

The pictures Hine took of youngsters across the country helped focus national attention on a multitude of child labor issues.

“There were two things I wanted to do,” Hine said of his work. “I wanted to show the things that had to be corrected. I wanted to show the things that had to be appreciated.”

As Hine visited textile mills throughout the Piedmont, he found evidence of children as young as six working long hours in noisy, lint-filled factories where they risked injury from exposed gears and belts.

And they did it for pennies a day.

Hine worked for the National Child Labor Committee, a nonprofit which asked him to photograph children shucking oysters in Mississippi, mining coal in West Virginia, making cigarettes in Virginia and cigars in Florida, harvesting tobacco in Kentucky, picking cotton in Texas and berries in Maryland, hawking newspapers on the streets of America’s major cities  and working in textile mills throughout the South.

The committee, organized in 1904, wanted Hine to capture working and living conditions of the children in an effort to get elected officials to enforce existing child labor laws and create new ones.

In North Carolina, existing laws allowed children as young as 13 to work in mills; an apprentice could be 12. Employees under 18 could work up to 66 hours a week.

Employers must “knowingly and willfully” violate the law before they could be convicted, but existing regulations didn’t allow for factory inspections.

Hine made at least three trips to North Carolina, the first in 1908, the year he began the project.

He found lots to photograph.

In the Piedmont, Hine discovered children younger than 13 working 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week. Parents and mill operators described the youngest children as “helpers.”

“Textile labor was always family labor,” said Robert C. Allen, professor of American studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. “Families needed the money.”

Mill superintendents often did not welcome Hine’s visits. In that case, he would set up his camera outside and photograph the children during shift changes.

At other times, he would pose as a Bible salesman or an industrial photographer to get inside.

“He went into these places under various ruses,” said Verna Curtis, a librarian at the Library of Congress, which has more than 5,100 of Hine’s photos. “They suspected he would find something wrong. They didn’t want to let him in.”

Hine described his assignment as “detective work.”

On his trip to Guilford County, Hine stopped at mills in Greensboro and High Point.

His photos included a series he took at what he described as the “Kindergarten Factory,” which was run by the High Point and Piedmont Hosiery Mills.

“Every child in these photos worked,” Hine wrote. “One morning I counted 22 of these little ones (12 years and under) going to work at about 6:15 a.m.”

Hine’s photos soon began appearing in national newspapers and NCLC pamphlets and posters.

Reformers credit Hine’s work with the establishment of stricter child labor and safety laws. But advances in textile machinery also made them too complicated for children to operate.

After his stint with the NCLC, Hine worked with the Red Cross during World War I and still later became well known for his iconic photos of the construction of the Empire State Building.

Hine died in 1940, following surgery.

“He was virtually penniless,” said B.J. Davis, one of the curators for the Hine exhibit at the Museum of History. “By the 1930s, his work was sort of considered old school.”

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com