Indianapolis

1907

Becomes staff photographer of the Russell Sage Foundation

Hine photographs life in the steel-making districts and the people of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for the influential sociological study The Pittsburgh Survey.

1908

Becomes photographer for the National Child Labor Committee

Inspired by the success of his photographs of immigrants, Hine leaves teaching to become the staff photographer of the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), which launched the first campaign in US history against the exploitation of children in industry. Over the next decade he documents child labor, especially in the Carolina Piedmont, to aid the committee's lobbying to end the practice; Hine himself had worked long hours in a factory as a boy.

1908–1918

Gains entry to mills and factories under false guises

To get into the mills, mines and factories where child labor was hidden from the public, Hine posed as a fire inspector, an insurance agent, a postcard or Bible salesman, a preacher, or even an industrial photographer recording factory machinery. Factory police and foremen often threatened him with violence or even death; travelling the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific, he photographed child miners, weavers, dockers, stokers, farmhands and garbage collectors.