Child Labor

I

Introduction

Child Labor, designation formerly applied to the practice of employing young children in factories, now used to denote the employment of minors generally, especially in work that may interfere with their education or endanger their health. Throughout the ages and in all cultures children joined with their parents to work in the fields, in the marketplace, and around the home as soon as they were old enough to perform simple tasks. The use of child labor was not regarded a social problem until the introduction of the factory system.

II

History in Great Britain

During the latter part of the 18th century in Britain, owners of cotton mills collected orphans and children of poor parents throughout the country, obtaining their services merely for the cost of maintaining them. In some cases children five and six years of age were forced to work from 13 to 16 hours a day.

Social reformers attempted as early as 1802 to obtain legislative restrictions against the worst features of the child-labor system, but little was done even to enforce existing laws limiting work hours and establishing a minimum age for employment. Conditions as bad as those imposed on pauper children rapidly developed in enterprises employing nonpauper children. Often with the approval of political, social, and religious leaders, children were permitted to labor in hazardous occupations such as mining. The resultant social evils included illiteracy, further impoverishment of poor families, and a multitude of diseased and crippled children.

Popular agitation for reform steadily increased. The first significant British legislation was enacted in 1878, when the minimum age of employees was raised to 10 years and employers were required to restrict employment of children between the ages of 10 and 14 to alternate days or consecutive half days. In addition to making every Saturday a half holiday, this legislation also limited the workday of children between 14 and 18 years of age to 12 hours, with an intermission of 2 hours for meals and rest.

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III

Child Labor in the United States

Meanwhile the industrial system developed in other countries, bringing with it abuses of child labor similar to those in Britain. In the early years of the 19th century children between the ages of 7 and 12 years made up one-third of the workforce in U.S. factories. The shortage of adult male laborers, who were needed for agriculture, contributed to the exploitation of child laborers. In addition, many adults held puritanical ideas regarding the evils of idleness among children, and so cooperated with employers, helping them recruit young factory hands from indigent families.

A

Early Legislation

The earliest feature of the factory system that caused concern among community leaders was the high rate of illiteracy among child laborers. The first effective step toward legislation governing the education of these children was taken in 1836 when the Massachusetts Legislature adopted a law prohibiting the employment of any child under 15 years of age who had received less than three months of schooling in the previous year. In 1848 Pennsylvania became the first state to regulate the age levels of youth employed in silk, cotton, or woolen mills by establishing a minimum age of 12. Several other states also established minimum-age requirements, but none of the laws passed made provisions for establishing proof of the child's age or for enforcement.

The length of the workday for children was the next feature of the factory system to be regulated by legislation. By 1853 several states had adopted a ten-hour workday for children under 12 years of age. Despite these restrictions, the number of children in industry increased greatly in the United States after the American Civil War, when industrial expansion resulted in unprecedented demand for workers. By the end of the 19th century nearly one-fifth of all American children between the ages of 10 and 16 were gainfully employed. By 1910, however, as the result of the public-enlightenment activities of various organizations, notably the National Child Labor Committee, the legislatures of several states had enacted restrictive legislation that led to sharp reductions in the number of children employed in industry.

Because of the lack of uniformity in child-labor standards established in the various states, a condition that placed industries in states with relatively high standards in a disadvantageous competitive position, the U.S. Congress, in 1916, passed a law that set a national minimum age of 14 in industries producing nonagricultural goods for interstate commerce or for export. In 1918, however, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in a 5-4 decision, that the legislation was an unconstitutional infringement on personal freedom. The following year, the Congress tried another strategy to establish protection for child workers through taxation of employers. But in 1922 the Child Labor Tax Law, as it was known, was ruled unconstitutional for being overtly “prohibitory and regulatory.” In 1924 both houses of Congress passed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, empowering Congress to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under 18 years of age. The number of state legislatures that ratified the proposed amendment was 28, or 8 less than the 36 then required.

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