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Worker standing beside a staggered tooth gear, Mesta Machine Company, West Homestead, PA, 1913.
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Worker standing beside a staggered tooth gear, Mesta Machine Company, West Homestead, PA, 1913.

Credit: Courtesy of the Carnegie Museum of Art, gift of Mesta Engineering Company

Industrial photographs from the early 1900s used workers to demonstrate the awesome size and power of new machinery and the materials fabricated by that machinery. Unintentionally, the photographs also symbolize the dehumanization of industrial workers, often treated by their employers as cheap, interchangeable, and expendable parts of production.

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