Contemporary Justice and the Child

Through an open competition, Symeon Shimin was selected to depict the theme of Contemporary Justice and the Child on the third floor stairwell of the Department of Justice Building in Washington, D.C. The Section of Painting and Sculpture also commissioned Emil Bisttram to paint Contemporary Justice and Woman on the first floor and John Ballator to depict Contemporary Justice and Man on the second floor.

Shimin chose to present both the positive and negative aspects of childhood and the just and unjust treatment of young people. At center, a mother places her hands on either side of her child who faces two possible paths in life, as represented on the left and right side of the mural. To the left, homeless children sleep in crumpled positions, and above them, a mass of exploited child laborers stare out hopelessly under the shadow of a large factory. From the 1890s to the 1930s, large numbers of poor and immigrant children worked in unhealthy and hazardous conditions in factories, mines, and other industries across the United States. Shimin, having worked for the National Child Labor Committee, was acutely aware of this problem. While Shimin was painting this mural, the federal government began making significant strides in preventing child labor through several acts passed under the New Deal. Shimin wrote that the children in this mural are “stumped in growth – willed through toil – destroyed by it – so that within the folds of a great country there exists, perhaps, the saddest and most tragic blight.”

Below the mother and child, large hands hold a drafting triangle and a compass over an architectural blueprint. These symbols of planning and building direct the viewer toward the right side of the mural. Here, two young people examine the blueprint, and above them, girls and boys receive an education in the sciences. Students handle microscopes, test tubes, and beakers while young athletes engage in a healthy foot race under a blue sky. Shimin shows white and black children learning and playing together at a time when schools were becoming increasingly segregated. The artist suggests in his painting that children can reach their greatest potential when society provides them with the proper resources. In describing this right section, Shimin wanted to convey “through intelligent planning – study and sport – all that helps to build a healthy body and mind ready to cope with vital problems when coming into manhood.”

Responding to initial designs for this mural, building architects and members of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts criticized the drab colors of the composition and the “gloomy outlook” of the left side. They encouraged Shimin to emphasize the positive aspects of childhood at least as much as the negative. Shimin wrote of the child laborers: “Their tragic fate demands that I give them their importance – However, I do agree wholeheartedly … that the benefits and the results of intelligent planning for the young be made at least equally emphatic.” As he revised the work, it gained intensity. When the mural was unveiled in 1940, it received praise from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and scholars have hailed it as an “eloquent condemnation of child-labor” and “one of the most compelling images to have been produced under Section patronage.”