LAD #29

Keating-Owen bill of 1916

 

In 1900 there were about 2 million children working in the United States.  This simple statistic opened the American public's eyes to how big the issue of child labor was in the nation.  Many famous figures helped  bring attention to this issue such as Lewis Hine, Karl Marx and Charles Dickens.  The Keating-Owen bill was based on Senator Beveridge's proposal and used the government's ability to regulate interstate commerce to regulate child labor.  This act banned the sale of products from any facility that employed children under the aged of 14 and any mine that employed children under the age of 16.  But, later the supreme court ruled it was unconstitutional and that the government did not have that much power.  In 1918 though, the Child Labor Tax Law was passed and it indirectly.  But it too was found unconstitutional by the court.   The Federal Government obviously wanted to regulate child labor but the Supreme Court made it almost impossible to do so.  Federal protection of children would not be obtained until the Fair Labour Standards Act in 1938.  Finally this was victorious and in 1941 the Supreme Court reversed it's earlier opinions and upheld constitutionality of the Fair Labor Standards Act which is still in place today.