Child labor law

“ Laws limiting their labor are perfectly constitutional, and some child-labor laws exist already in all States and Territories except Nevada. The only dispute on the child-labor question is whether such legislation should be Federal, or rather whether the Constitution should be so amended as to make Federal legislation possible. ”

“ A vigorous attempt has been made to cope with the child labor problem by organizing a Child Labor Campaign, the object of which may be summed up in one word—Legislation. Philanthropists, social workers, and public-spirited citizens, roused by the tales of child work in mine and factory, have turned eagerly to the American cure-all, negative legislation, and have secured the passage of laws which forbid children under a certain age to work, and which penalize the employer who violates the law. ”

“ It is the aim of this paper to set forth some essential points of an effective child labor law efficiently enforced; for whatever the local differences of industrial conditions may be, certain fundamental needs of childhood are constant and child labor legislation must ultimately be framed with regard to these. ”

“ MINIMUM PROVISIONS OF A GOOD CHILD LABOR LAW.—The passage of more comprehensive child labor laws is being advocated by a number of social agencies, notably by the National Child Labor Committee. The minimum provisions of a good child labor law have been set forth by the committee somewhat as follows:
As a general proposition, no child should be regularly employed in a gainful occupation who is under sixteen years of age. There should be an even higher age limit for child workers in quarries, mines, and other dangerous places. Children should not work more than eight hours a day. ”

“ Every state in the Union has broken through the tradition pale of non-interference with individual activity, by enacting a law forbidding children to work before reaching a certain age, and commanding them to attend school until that age is reached. These laws virtually deprive the family of anticipated income by forbidding work for wages, and by taking children away from the home, thus depriving the parents of their help in the home during school hours. ”

“ A recent study of the home conditions shows that the worst abuses of child labor linger in this remnant of58 family work. No child labor law that has been passed in the United States seems to be adequate to the situation. To control this there must be a special provision made in the factory laws of each state regarding the work done by families in their own homes. ”

“ According to the last census in the United States, 1,990,225 children under fifteen years of age are at work at some gainful occupation and 895,976 of these children are thirteen or under. Advanced legislation has been taken in most of the states, but as the standards of such legislation rise in the different states it becomes clear that with the reenactment of the child labor law further steps must be taken for the protection of children against exploitation. ”

“ The friends of the children are desirous of a uniform child-labor law which, if adopted and enforced by competent inspectors, would prevent factory work for all under fourteen years of age, and for weak children under sixteen would prescribe a limited number of hours and allow no night-work, would require certain certificates of age and health before employment is given, and would compel school attendance and the attainment of a limited education before permission is granted to go into the factory. ”

“ Child labor laws penalize the employer. The employer dismisses the child. What follows? If the dismissed child dislikes the school, as children who have been at work almost invariably do, he turns to street life. If the family of the dismissed child is in need of his income, he, with the other members of the family, suffers from under-nutrition after that income ceases. In either case, the dismissed child is the loser. While the reformer goes into ecstasies over the statistics of decreasing child labor, the victims of the decrease either run the streets, go hungry, or suffer from both evils. ”

“ The law prohibits the employment of children under the age of 16, but the government had not adopted a comprehensive policy to combat child labor and child labor remained a persistent problem. The labor law specifies administrative review, fines, and revocation of business licenses of those businesses that illegally hire minors. The law also stipulates that parents or guardians should provide for children's subsistence. Workers between the ages of 16 and 18 were referred to as "juvenile workers" and were prohibited from engaging in certain forms of physical work, including labor in mines. ”

“ Even in the case of the minority who are ignorant of conditions, or indifferent to law, it cannot be fairly said that their attitude constitutes a cause of child labor. It helps to make child labor possible, but it is not a moving factor, leading children to the mills. ”

“ The law prohibits employment of minors less than 15 years of age and places restrictions on the employment of minors under age 18; however, the government did not adequately enforce laws pertaining to child labor. The law permits children to work in agriculture, domestic service, and some small businesses but prohibits employment of women and minors in hard labor or night work. ”

“ The hours of labor for persons under sixteen are also limited in some states to not exceeding eight per day. Many other provisions restricting child labor are now in force, and year by year new limitations are being added. [188] In 1916 Congress undertook to place a general restriction on child labor throughout the entire country by passing a law which forbade the transportation and sale in interstate commerce of any goods made in whole or in part by children under a designated age-limit. ”

“ It is to protect the children from this class of employers that child labor laws are enacted. They are men hungering after profits,—and when they take them in the form of children, the community balances the account. But competition is disappearing from industry, and is being replaced by combination. Moreover, manufacturers are coming to see, more and more, the undesirability and the unprofitableness of child labor. ”

“ Child labor laws are now more humane than a few years ago; conditions in many factories have been vastly improved. But as yet we are far from an ideal stage in the regulation and supervision of this feature of industrial life. ”

“ Large families among migratory agricultural laborers in our own country are likewise brought into existence in response to an industrial demand. The enforcement of the child labor laws and the extension of their restrictions are therefore an urgent necessity, not so much, as some of our child-labor authorities believe, to enable these children to go to school, as to prevent the recruiting of our next generation from the least intelligent and most unskilled classes in the community. ”

“ The present world-wide agitation against child labor is another suggestive fact which points toward a physical millenium. Child labor laws have been very generally enacted. In New Zealand all employed women and children have been placed under strict legal protection. ”

“ The recent startling revelations of non-enforcement of the laws intended to protect young children from exhausting overwork in the glass factories in New Jersey merely intimate what will be found true in every state in which there is not a powerfully organized, compact body of public opinion alert to insist upon the retention 164of competent officers, the removal of incompetent ones, and the uniform, consistent enforcement of all the provisions of the child labor laws. ”

“ The first child labor laws were enacted in England through the efforts of those members of parliament whose hearts were wrung by the condition of the little parish apprentices bound out to the early textile manufacturers of the north; and through the long years required to build up the code of child labor legislation which England now possesses, knowledge of the conditions has always preceded effective legislation. ”

“ Florence Kelley
Secretary National Consumers’ League 155It is most desirable that the present widespread agitation for child labor legislation may achieve permanent results of a uniform character. Such laws as now exist are alike in no two states; they are enforced differently when they are enforced at all; they are uniform only in their failure to afford adequate protection to the rising generation of the working class. ”

“ It is a necessity so real that children are sent to the mills, not because parents are "greedy and indifferent," but because the whole amount which a hard-working day laborer can earn will not keep his family supplied with the necessities, not to mention the luxuries of life.
In addition to pleading for the widow and the orphan, the employer who fights child labor legislation invariably pleads for himself. ”

“ Such an investigation must necessarily take into account many of the problems with which this question of child labor is connected. These problems can be actually met, in most cases, only by the States themselves; but the lack of proper legislation in one State in such a matter as child labor often renders it excessively difficult to establish protective restriction upon the work in another State having the same industries, so that the worst tends to drag down the better. ”

“ Can anybody doubt that we shall soon have a National Child Employment Act by which the childhood and youth of the land may be protected against those labor practices that imperil our chief national resource, the human resource? ”

“ Thus the school system with its defective curriculum, its imperfect, overworked machinery, its young, inexperienced teachers, and its repressive discipline, forms in the aggregate an ogre from which the child turns to the burden and the soul-destroying monotony of factory work.
Here, then, are two causes, the needy family and the defective school system, which are immediately responsible for child labor. Personal causes—greed, ignorance, and indifference of manufacturer, parent, and child—are insignificant factors. The causes of child labor are primarily economic and social. ”

“ The present system of keeping a child from all work until his body and mind are formed and then plunging him into industrial life is only exceeded in folly and cruelty by the child slavery system commonly known as “child labor.” ”

“ While this mill is the exception, and while few advertisements for "Small girls" are seen, yet the low standard set by the "small girl" manufacturer must, in the competitive struggle, be accepted by other manufacturers; hence the "small" ones secure employment everywhere.
So, from many sides, the child labor problem is a problem. It is a problem to the child who works; to the home which sends its children into the mills; to the schools which fail to educate the working children; to the manufacturer who wants "small girls and boys;" and to the society which demands and gets cheap goods. ”

“ The statements which are constantly made, laying the entire blame for child labor upon the manufacturer, are, therefore, unfounded and unfair. The employer may, as in the case of industrial evolution, make child labor possible, but he does not actively cause it. ”

“ Their outcome is doubtful because the average legislator seems to be blind to the bad results of street trading 87and cheerfully reflects the popular view that these “sturdy, little merchants” are all supporting widowed mothers and headed straight for the White House.
Many states are coming to recognize the needs of children over fourteen. This is evidenced not only by the wide discussion of vocational schools and the bills before the Legislatures of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Massachusetts, New York and other states, but also by the extension of child labor laws. ”

“ If children under sixteen were prohibited from working in the Southern cotton mills, would the manufacturers move? Would it not be a discovery pregnant with the most far-reaching importance for the future, if it were found that child labor is not at all necessary to industry, and that, after all, it entails just as great an industrial waste as it does a social one? ”

“ One of the acknowledged evils of machinery is the exploitation of child labor which usually follows its introduction. Such was the case in England, and we find it repeated to-day in the new industrial districts of the South. In such industries where the repetition of a small mechanical process enables child labor to be employed, the temptation to take advantage of the opportunity is great; for children have no rights to assert, no wage scale to uphold or working time to protect. In that respect child labor is akin to slave labor. ”

“ In the social fiber, in family life, in taxes, child labor is costly. It breaks down the individual, it destroys the family life of the present, and threatens the family life of the future, and last, probably least in importance, it adds to the number of incompetent that the community must support. From any social viewpoint, child labor is costly. ”

“ Even a casual reading of this quotation calls attention to the fact that there is the keenest competition between employment and education. The modern industrial system finds children profitable for certain purposes and uses them. If society is to enforce its judgment that these children ought to be in school, that judgment will have to express itself in mandatory terms. The federal government has recently taken a hand in the matter. It is difficult or impossible in some states to get suitable legislation against the exploitation of child labor by unprincipled employers. ”