The 1900s U.S census revealed that over 1.75 million children aged ten to fifteen-year-old were working for meager wages. These children worked in agriculture, factories, streets, hotels — the dawn of the industrial revolution and a rapid increase in the industrial exploitation of labor. Lewis Wickes Hine was an American sociologist and photographer whose work was instrumental in changing child labor laws in the United States. In 1908 he started his efforts against child labor by documenting the lives of children working in factories, streets, and farms for the National Child Labor Committee. He got serious threats from the factory owners, but he didn’t stop. Risking his safety, Hine snapped thousands of photographs with one goal – to end child labor. His photographs were published in newspapers, pamphlets, and magazines, which compelled the federal government eventually to put out stricter labor laws.