George & Clarence Goodeill, Page Two

Three cutters in Factory #7, Seacoast Canning Co., Eastport, Me. They work regularly whenever there are fish. (Note the knives they use.) Back of them and under foot is refuse. On the right hand is Grayson Forsythe, 7 years old. Middle is George Goodell, 9 years old, finger badly cut and wrapped up. Said, "the salt gets unto the cut." Said he makes $1.50 some days. Left end, Clarence Goodell, 6 years, helps brother. Location: Eastport, Maine, August 1911, Lewis Hine.

"The real problem in America is not child labor, but child idleness. You cannot convince me that it hurts a child (age 4+) either physically or morally to make him work. Where one child has been injured from work, 10,000 have gone to the devil because of lack of occupation" -Charles S. Thomas, US Senator from Senator from Colorado from 1913 to 1921

According to A History of the New England Fisheries, by Raymond McFarland, published in 1911:

"The first cannery for sardines was built at Eastport in 1875. During each of the succeeding years, one new cannery was added to the number so that in 1879, there were five in operation. In the spring of 1880, eight more were built at Eastport, and one each at Robbinston, Lubec, Jonesport, Lamoine, and Camden, making eighteen in operation in the State. By 1886 there were thirty-two canneries in operation at Eastport and the neighboring places. Along the coast, scattered from Cutler westward, there were thirteen others in operation, making forty-five canneries in Maine in 1886."

"In 1899, two companies were formed, known as the Seacoast Packing Company and the Standard Sardine Company, which included most of the canneries in Washington and Hancock Counties. The Seacoast Packing Company eventually absorbed its younger rival, and a number of the more antiquated plants were discontinued. Some of the canneries were fitted with new and improved machinery and were thus rendered more effective than formerly. Eleven plants at Eastport, owned by the Seacoast Packing Company, were not operated in 1902. This company was reorganized in 1903, and a greater number of its canneries were sold."

The company that emerged from the reorganization was called the Seacoast Canning Co, the site of over 50 child labor photos taken by Lewis Hine in August of 1911. At least seven of those photos contained members of the Goodeill family. The two of George and Clarence, demonstrating their prowess with a butcher knife, were among Hine's most shocking pictures.

George Goodeill, (11 years old), Eastport, Maine, August 1911. Photo by Lewis Hine.

Clarence Goodeill (8 years old), Eastport, Maine, August 1911. Photo by Lewis Hine.

George Garfield Goodeill was born in Eastport, on August 7, 1900; and Clarence Goodeill was born in Calais, Maine, on May 12, 1903. They were among at least eight children born to Solomon Goodeill and Margaret May Stein, who married on February 20, 1897, in St. George, New Brunswick, Canada. Solomon was born in St. George in 1868, and died in 1948. Margaret was also born in St. George, in about 1879, and died in 1914, at the young age of 35. George married Edna Cox and had two daughters. Clarence married Hilda Flagg and had a son and two daughters. George passed away on March 18, 1987, at the age of 86; and Clarence passed away in March of 1954, at the age of about 51.