child labor

Before the twentieth century, child labor was rampant. Knowledge of its extent prior to 1870 is fragmentary because child labor statistics before then are not available, but juvenile employment probably existed in the spinning schools established early in the colonies. As the nineteenth century advanced, child labor became more widespread. The census of 1870 reported the employment of three-quarters of a million children between ten and fifteen years of age. From 1870 to 1910, the number of children reported as gainfully employed continued to increase steadily before the American public took notice of its ill effects.

Early Struggles and Successes

Among the earliest efforts to deal with the problem of child labor in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were those of organized labor. For example, the Knights of Labor conducted a campaign for child labor legislation in the 1870s and 1880s that resulted in the enactment of many state laws. The American Federation of Labor consistently spoke out against child labor as a cause of downward pressure on wages and campaigned for the "family wage" that would allow for a man to be the sole breadwinner. Nonetheless, during the nineteenth century, working children, although hired for their docility, took part in strikes and occasionally even led their elders in walkouts. The fledgling industrial unions in the early twentieth century organized the youngest workers, and there was even a union of child workers: the Newsboys and Bootblacks' Protective Union, chartered by the Cleveland AFL. The union's purpose was "to secure a fair compensation for our labor, lessen the hours of labor" and "educate the members in the principles of trade unionism so when they develop into manhood they will at all times struggle for the full product of their labor."

As opposition to child labor grew, the campaign against child labor—although an uphill battle—began to score victories. Conditions in the canning industry, the glass industry, anthracite mining, and other industries began to attract considerable attention at the turn of the century. In the South, a threefold rise in number of child laborers during the decade ending in 1900 aroused public sentiment for child labor laws. In the North, insistence on stronger legislation and better enforcement led to the formation of the National Child Labor Committee in 1904. This committee, chartered by Congress in 1907 to promote the welfare of America's working children, investigated conditions in various states and industries and spearheaded the push for state legislation with conspicuous success. The 1920 census reflected a decline in child labor that continued in the 1930s.

Federal Regulation

The backwardness of certain states and the lack of uniformity of state laws led to demands for federal regulation. Early efforts were unsuccessful. In Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918) and Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company (1922), the U.S. Supreme Court set aside attempts at congressional regulation. Child labor reformers, nevertheless, began to push for a child labor amendment to the Constitution. In 1924, such an amendment was adopted by Congress and submitted to the states, but by 1950 only twenty-four had ratified it.

The New Deal finally brought significant federal regulation. The Public Contracts Act of 1936 set the minimum age for employment at sixteen for boys and at eighteen for girls in firms supplying goods under federal contract. A year later, the Beet Sugar Act set the minimum age at fourteen for employment in cultivating and harvesting sugar beets and cane. Far more sweeping was the benchmark Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FSLA). For agriculture, it set the minimum working age at fourteen for employment outside of school hours and at sixteen for employment during school hours. For nonagricultural work in interstate commerce, sixteen was the minimum age for employment during school hours, and eighteen for occupations designated hazardous by the secretary of labor. A major amendment to the FSLA in 1948 prohibited children from performing farm work when schools were in session in the district where they resided. There were no other important changes in the FSLA until 1974, when new legislation prohibited work by any child under age twelve on a farm covered by minimum-wage regulations (farms using at least five-hundred days of work in a calendar quarter).

Contemporary Problems

Despite the existence of prohibiting legislation, considerable child labor continues to exist, primarily in agriculture. For the most part, the workers are children of migrant farm workers and the rural poor. Child labor and school-attendance laws are least likely to be enforced on behalf of these children. This lack of enforcement contributes, no doubt, to the fact that the educational attainment of migrant children is still half that of the rest of the population. Beyond agriculture, child labor has emerged, or sometimes reemerged, in a number of areas. Around the turn of the twenty-first century, there have been efforts to relax the minimum-age laws for doing certain kinds of work. The most notable challenge has come from Amish families, who have opened small manufacturing shops in response to the reduced availability of farmland and have sought exemptions on the basis of religious freedom to employ their children in these shops. In addition, the employment of children in sweatshops that produce clothes for major labels has returned to American cities. Also, children and young teenagers selling candy for purportedly charitable purposes have been overworked and exploited by the companies that hire them in work crews. Children have also remained a part of the "illegal economy," forced into child prostitution and child pornography.

Even work performed by teenagers between fourteen and eighteen—regarded as benign and beneficial long after most work by children under fourteen was abolished—has been reexamined and found problematic. When Teenagers Work: The Psychological and Social Costs of Adolescent Employment (1986), by Ellen Greenberger, has linked teen work to greater teen alcohol use and found that more than twenty hours of work per week can be harmful. The danger of workplace injury is far greater for often-inexperienced teenagers than for older workers, and many common teen work sites such as restaurants become especially dangerous when teenagers are asked to perform tasks (such as operating food processing machines) that are legally prohibited to them. Other workplaces offer unique dangers, for example, convenience stores where holdups at gunpoint occur, and pizza delivery companies whose fast-delivery promises encourage unsafe driving. Finally, the career-building role of teen work may be overestimated, except when linked to internships or vocational education.

Bibliography

Fyfe, Alec. Child Labour. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1989.

Greenberger, Ellen. When Teenagers Work: The Psychological and Social Costs of Adolescent Employment. New York: Basic Books, 1986.

Hamburger, Martin. "Protection from Participation As Deprivation of Rights." New Generation. 53, no. 3 (summer 1971): 1–6.

Hobbs, Sandy, Jim McKechnie, and Michael Lavalette. Child Labor: A World History Companion. Santa Clara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 1999.

Taylor, Ronald B. Sweatshops in the Sun: Child Labor on the Farm. Boston: Beacon Press, 1973.

Working America's Children to Death. Washington, D.C.: American Youth Work Center and National Consumers League, 1990.

Zelizer, Viviana A. Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children. New York: Basic Books, 1985.

—Susan Roth Breitzer