The following is from The Survey, published February 7, 1914:

"Come out with me at sunup," says Mr. (Lewis) Hine, "and watch the children trooping into the fields, some of them kiddies four or five years old, to begin the pick, pick, pick, drop into the bag, step forward; pick, pick, drop into the bag, step forward, six days in the week five months in the year, under a relentless sun. The mere sight of their monotonous repetition will tire you out long before they stop. Their working day follows the sun, and not until sundown will they leave the fields. Ruby, aged seven, stopped working long enough to say, as I stood by her, 'I works from sunup to sundown, an' picks 35 pounds a day.' Imagine the number of feathery bolls that must go into the bag hanging about her neck to tip the scale at 35 pounds!"

"The result of a few years of this incessant grind, long hours, physical strain, lack of proper food and care, and lack of mental stimulus? What can it be but physical degeneration and moral atrophy? We have long assailed (and justly) the cotton industry as the Herod of the mills. The sunshine in the cotton fields has blinded our eyes to the fact that the cotton picker suffers quite as much as the mill hand from the monotony, overwork, and hopelessness of his life. It is high time for us to face the truth and add to our indictment of King Cotton a new charge - the Herod of the fields."

"One of the most pitiful things about the situation is the indifferent acceptance of conditions by people generally. I heard very little anxious comment except from school teachers. Ruby's father, who said, 'They git five months' schoolin' and it ain't 'nuff', stood out among all the parents I interviewed as a rare exception. It is quite possible that the Texas farmers are not so indifferent to the exploitation of their children as appears, for they are literally 'up against it.' They are transient renters, weighed down by debt, illiterate, and dependent upon the crops."

"But I place first and foremost in any program of change the restriction of child labor. Children must be left free to go to school. At a recent conference of the Texas State Board of Charities and Corrections, all were agreed that compulsory education is the greatest need of Texas today. Patriotism demands that we save the children. We must begin at once to lay the foundation for the farmer of tomorrow by a longer period of child hood today, with better preparation for work and better training for life." -National Child Labor Committee

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According to the census, William and Rachel (Keesee) Hollingsworth were renting a farm in 1900, on land located in the Choctaw Nation, later to become the state of Oklahoma. Their farm was situated in what is now the unincorporated village of Blue, Oklahoma, about 30 miles northeast of Denison, Texas, where Lewis Hine photographed Elbert and Ruby 13 years later. Mr. and Mrs. Hollingsworth had married in about 1895, and in 1900 had two children, Herman and Myrtle. It was William's second marriage. Elbert Payton Hollingsworth was born in Blue on August 17, 1903; and Ruby Edith Hollingsworth was born in Denison on January 21, 1906.

According to the 1910 census, the family owned a farm in Denison, where they apparently grew cotton. I could not find them in the 1920 census. In 1930, William was still living in Denison and was working as a janitor for a railroad office. His wife Rachel and daughter Ruby were still in the home. William died in 1932, and Rachel died in 1943.