Heritage Winooski Mill Museum

At A Glance

Location: 

Winooski, Vermont

Primary Issue Area:

  • Living Economies

Active since:

2022

  • Students posing in front of Lewis Hine Child Labor photos from the early 1900s
  • UVM students studying a map of child labor issues around the globe today
  • Two middle school students with their poster presentation about labor issues in the shoe industry.
  • Elementary school students looking at pamphlets about current global labor issues
  • Students playing a bobbin game during a visit to the Mill Museum

Our Purpose

Our purpose for this project is to educate the public on child labor issues and inspire our community to take action. We are a small local textile museum that shares the history of mill workers in our area. We have been working on updating our child labor exhibition so that it incorporates information about child labor issues today in the US and around the globe. We do not want people to look at historic Lewis Hine photos of kids working in mills 100 years ago and think it is an issue of the past! It is alarming how many students come through our museum and share their own personal experiences of ignoring or being asked by their bosses to break labor laws that are supposed to protect them.Our exhibition will include a pamphlet that visitors can take with them that give suggestions on how to purchase non-exploitive clothing as well as a pamphlet for students to know their labor rights, and what to do if they are being asked to work in unsafe conditions.