Hine adopted many personas - fire inspector, postcard vendor, bible salesman - so he could be allowed in, and travelled hundreds and thousands of miles taking almost 5,000 photographs.

Girl Carrying Homework thro Greenwich Village, Lewis Hine, Rijksmuseum, Public Domain Mark
These photographs supported the Committee's lobbying to end child labour, and inspired a wave of moral outrage. By 1912, a Children's Bureau in the Department of Labor and Department of Commerce had been created, following NCLC's lobbying. Finally, in 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed bringing child labour to an ultimate end.
RELATED: Exhibition: Industrial Photography in the Machine Age
Lewis Hine's photographs were instrumental in changing child labor laws in the United States. His photographs - whether of children working, migrants at Ellis Island or wider industrial conditions - emphasise the human side of modern industry and remain powerful today.
Europe at Work - Share your story
When you were a child, did you have to work? Share your story and help us tell the story of Europe through our working lives in the past and the present.

This blog post is a part of the Europeana Common Culture project, which explores varied aspects of our shared cultural heritage across Europe.