Child Labor Laws

Examples of Child Labor Laws in the following topics:

• Child Labor

  • Legislations across the world prohibit child labor.
  • The National Child Labor Committee , an organization dedicated to the abolition of all child labor, was formed in 1904.
  • It was the first federal child labor law.
  • In 1924, Congress attempted to pass a constitutional amendment that would authorize a national child labor law.
  • Alongside the abolition of child labor, compulsory education laws also kept children out of abusive labor conditions.

• Middle-Class Reformers

  • Many states enacted laws to improve the conditions under which people lived and worked.
  • At the urging of such prominent social critics as Jane Addams , child labor laws were strengthened and new ones adopted, raising age limits, shortening work hours, restricting night work and requiring school attendance.
  • Equally important were the Workers' Compensation Laws, which made employers legally responsible for injuries sustained by employees at work.
  • New revenue laws were also enacted, which, by taxing inheritances , laid the groundwork for the contemporary f ederal income tax .

• The Varieties of Progressivism

  • Purification to eliminate waste and corruption was a powerful element, as well as the Progressives' support of worker compensation, improved child labor laws, minimum wage legislation, a support for a maximum hours that workers could work for, graduated income tax and allowed women the right to vote.
  • Child labor laws were designed to prohibit children from entering the workforce before a certain age, further compelling children into the public schools.
  • Pro-labor progressives such as Samuel Gompers argued that industrial monopolies were unnatural economic institutions which suppressed the competition which was necessary for progress and improvement.
  • United States antitrust law is the body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior (monopoly) and unfair business practices.
  • Wilson uses tariff, currency and anti-trust laws to prime the pump and get the economy working in a 1913 political cartoon.

• Social Justice

  • Child labor laws were designed to prevent the overworking of children in the newly emerging industries.
  • After 1907, the American Federation of Labor, under Samuel Gompers, moved to demand legal reforms that would support labor unions.
  • The United States Employees' Compensation Act is a federal law enacted on September 7, 1916.
  • President Woodrow Wilson signed H.R. 15316 into law on September 7, 1916.
  • In 1908 the National Child Labor Committee hired Lewis Wickes Hine, a sociology professor who advocated photography as an educational medium, to document child labor in American industry.

• Regulation

  • By the turn of the century, a middle class had developed that was leery of both the business elite and the radical political movements of farmers and laborers in the Midwest and West.
  • Pro labor progressives, such as Samuel Gompers, argued that industrial monopolies were unnatural economic institutions which suppressed the competition that was necessary for progress and improvement.
  • United States antitrust law is the body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior (monopoly) and unfair business practices.
  • Child labor laws were designed to prevent the overworking of children in the newly emerging industries.
  • After 1907, the American Federation of Labor, under Samuel Gompers, moved to demand legal reforms that would support labor unions.

• Empowering Labor

  • The New Deal succeeded in introducing a number of laws that empowered labor.
  • President Roosevelt signed the legislation into law on July 5, 1935.
  • Also, the ban on child labor introduced in FLSA did not cover agriculture where child labor was rampant.
  • FLSA was critical to establishing labor standards that remain the foundation of labor law in the United States.
  • Although the initial draft was more ambitious than the document finally passed by Congress after a long legal battle, federal law that established minimum wages, maximum working hours, and ban on child labor set a standard for how U.S. labor would negotiate future working conditions.

• Anti-Trust Laws

  • Wilson also attempted to curtail child labor with the Keating-Owen Act.
  • However, the Supreme Court declared that the law was unconstitutional in 1918.
  • The Clayton Antitrust Act was a law that specified and outlined "unfair and illegal" certain business practices such as price discrimination, agreements prohibiting retailers from handling other companies' products, and agreements to control other companies.
  • It was a stronger piece of legislation than other antitrust laws because it held individual officers of corporations responsible if their companies violated the laws.
  • Wilson uses tariff, currency and anti-trust laws to prime the pump and get the economy working in a 1913 political cartoon.

• Progressives and the Working Class

  • The referendum allowed a vote on a bill before it took force as law.
  • Additionally, state laws were created to improve labor conditions.
  • In 1903, Mary Harris Jones organized the Children's Crusade, a march of child workers from Kensington, Pennsylvania, to the home of President Theodore Roosevelt in Oyster Bay, New York, bringing national attention to the issue of child labor.
  • In 1912, the United States Children's Bureau was created in order to investigate "all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life among all classes of our people. " An alliance of labor and humanitarian groups induced some state legislatures to grant aid to mothers with dependent children.
  • Under pressure from the National Child Labor Committee, nearly every state set a minimum age for employment and limited hours that employers could make children work.

• The Knights of Labor and the "Conditions Essential to Liberty"

  • The Knights of Labor transitioned from a fraternal organization to a labor union that promoted the uplift of the workingman.
  • The Knights of Labor was the largest and one of the most important American labor organizations of the 1880s.
  • They also called for legislation to end child and convict labor .
  • The Knights strongly supported the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Contract Labor Law of 1885, as did many other labor groups, although the group did accept most others, including skilled and unskilled women of any profession.
  • Two years later, members of the Socialist Labor Party left the Knights to found the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance as a Marxist rival.

• Industrial Recovery

  • It was one of the most prominent and controversial New Deal laws focused on boosting the industry.
  • They could not promote monopolies or create unfair competition for small businesses and were exempt from federal antitrust laws.
  • The challenge of this law is whether we can sink selfish interest and present a solid front against a common peril. "
  • Johnson called on every business establishment in the nation to accept a stopgap "blanket code": a minimum wage of between 20 and 45 cents per hour, a maximum workweek of 35–45 hours, and the abolition of child labor.
  • Many of NIRA labor provisions reappeared in the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act), passed later the same year.