Lewis Hine was one of the great photographers of the Progressive Era, when cities and communities tried to ameliorate the difficult working conditions facing working class Americans. He had a special interest in child labor, and his pictures are now considered "iconic," along with those of the WPA photographers. This doesn't mean that they are any less sad...for some children it meant a lost childhood.

The last years of his life were filled with professional struggles due to loss of government and corporate patronage. Nobody was interested in his work, past or present, and Lewis Hine was consigned to the same level of poverty as he had earlier recorded in his pictures. He died at age 66 on November 3, 1940 in New York.