Child Labor

Children have been used as cheap labor from the earliest times of human existence. Historically children were viewed by parents as a source of labor on farms or in areas of “woman's work.” Grown children were the “social security” of their parents for whom they would provide. In a great many areas of the world today this system of children as a labor asset is still the norm. It has only been with the rise of modern industrial societies where the economic surpluses are sufficiently large that a leisure class of children attending school instead of working has been affordable.

Well before 1900 reformers began a campaign to reduce or exclude the labor of children from the economy of the United States and from those in Europe. The Census of 1900 reported that over two million children were working on the streets or employment centers of the United States. The report sparked a national movement to reform child labor practices.

The Keating-Owen Act of 1916 (Wick's Bill) signed by President Woodrow Wilson was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the case of Hammer v. Dagenhart (247 U.S. 251) in 1918. The Court ruled that the law exceeded the authority of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. In December 1918 Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1919, which included a second child labor law. The law known as the Child Labor Tax Law sought to regulate child labor through taxation. However, the Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company 259 U.S. 20 (1922). The Court reasoned that the power of Congress was being excessively widened so that it interfered with the right of the states to regulate local trade.

In 1924 Congress proposed the Child Labor Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Amendment was actively opposed by some business interests. It failed in the 1920s and 1930s; however, today it is in a state of legal limbo because it could be adopted in the future. Ten more states are needed for its adoption. Because the Child Labor Amendment would lodge exclusive jurisdiction over child labor in the Congress of the United States many states have rejected it. The Amendment was a response to decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States that upheld child employment and rejected state legislative efforts to ban or limit child employment practices. The latest case before the Amendment was proposed was the Supreme Court's decision declaring the Child Labor Law unconstitutional. The law sought to regulate the employment of children in canneries, mills, mines, quarries, manufacturing centers or workshops if under the age of 14. In 1941 the Supreme Court reversed its decision on the Dagenhart Case in U.S. v. Darby Lumber Co., 312 U.S. 100. The ruling upheld the constitutionality of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which is still in force today.

Child labor opponents were successful in eliminating the labor of small children from the economy by the 1940s. The exclusion of children from the economy as laborers reduced the supply of labor to the benefit of adults and included them in the controls put on labor sought by labor unions. Today the exclusion of children from the labor markets in Western countries is enforced through child labor laws that impose penalties for employing underaged workers. Household chores, family farm work, and [Page 264]work in a business owned by the child's family is generally excluded.

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