H. R. 8234, a bill to prevent interstate commerce in the products of child labor and for other purposes   (modified/link to original)    

No factory, or business shall ship or sell through interstate or foreign commerce, any product of a mine who employs children under the age of 16, or any product of any mill, cannery, workshop, factory, or manufacturing establishment, who employs children under the age of 14, or children between 14 and 16 who works more than 8 hours in any day, or more than 6 days in any week, or after the hour of 7 p.m, or before 6 a.m.:

SEC. 3. To enforce this Act the Secretary of Labor has authority to inspect at any time mines, quarries, mills, canneries, workshops, factories, manufacturing establishments, and other places where goods are produced.

SEC. 4. That it shall be the duty of each district attorney to whom the Secretary of Labor shall report any violation of this Act, or to whom any State factory or mining or quarry inspector, commissioner of labor, State medical inspector or school-attendance officer, or any other person shall present satisfactory evidence of any such violation to take the factory or mine to court without delay for the enforcement of the penalties in such cases herein provided: 

SEC. 5. That any person who violates this Act, or who refuses inspection shall, be punished by a fine of not more than $200, and for each offense after the first be punished by a fine of not more than $1,000, nor less than $100, or by imprisonment for not more than three months, or by both such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court: 

Historical Context:  

In 1789 the Constitution becomes the law of the land.  The Constitution includes what is known as the "Commerce Clause".  Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.”

In the coal mines and cotton mills children started working at age eight or nine.  They faced the same work hazards as adults but were also injured when pulling pranks and playing while working.  (For example, in the cotton mills, child workers would grab the belts that powered the machines and see who could ride them farthest up toward the drive shaft in the ceiling before letting go and falling to the floor.)  

In the coal industry, many children worked as slate pickers.  Sitting at a chute under the machines crushing the coal, they removed pieces of slate and other impurities.  The cloud of coal dust that swirled around them could cause them to get black lung disease.  Children and others who worked in the cotton mills, constantly breathing in cotton dust, fell ill with brown lung, another crippling disease.

TImeline of Child Labor Reform and the U.S. Labor Movement

1832 A New England worker’s union resolves that “Children should not be allowed to labor in the factories from morning till night, without any time for healthy recreation and mental culture,” for it “endangers their well-being and health”

1836 The National Trades’ Union Convention makes the first formal, public proposal recommending states establish minimum ages for factory work.

1836 Massachusetts requires factory workers under 15 attend school at least 3 months/year

1842 Massachusetts limits children’s work days to 10 hours; other states soon pass similar laws—but most of these laws are not consistently enforced

1876 Working Men’s Party proposes banning the employment of children under 14

1881 The American Federation of Labor calls on states to ban children under 14 from working 

1883 Led by Samuel Gompers, the New York labor movement sponsors legislation prohibiting cigar making in tenements, where thousands of young children work in the trade

1892 Democrats promise to ban employment for children under 15

1904 National Child Labor Committee forms: Aggressive national campaign for federal child labor law reform begins

1908 NCLC hires Lewis Hines to travel around America and take pictures of children working.

February 1916 - Edward Keating (D)Colorado introduces H.R. 8234

Committee on Interstate Commerce, Report on H.R. 8234, 1916 (modified/link to original) 

After Edward Keating introduced H.R. 8234 it was sent to the Committee on Interstate Commerce.  This is the report they sent Congress. 

When we deal with the subject of protecting children from the known consequences of child labor, we deal with a helpless part of our population. Their neglect defeats the success of democracy.  Child labor leads to unhealthy citizens.  It hurts the human race.

Children suffer physically, and mentally through the denial of an education.   We know child labor leads to crime, a large percent of juvenile delinquents are children who are put to work too soon. 

Child labor is a national evil. Children are the future citizens of the Nation and the States.  In some States child-labor laws are not enforced.  A Federal law will help, not hurt, enforcement by State authorities.

This committee feels not only is the bill Constitutional, but its creation is demanded by the inability of the States to stop this national evil. As long as a single State fails to make good child-labor laws, no other State can protect its own businesses against the unfair competition of the businesses of that State, or to protect its consumers against unknowingly supporting, those who exploit the childhood of the country. 

Edward Keating (D)Colorado, Speech on Federal Child Labor Legislation given during the National Child Labor’s 12 Annual Conference on Child Labor, 1916  (modified/link to original)

Keating was a Colorado Representative to Congress.  He was one of the authors of H.R.8234.  His biography

In Washington there is a disease called constitutionitis.  It develops in a member of Congress when he is not brave enough to openly oppose a cause because it is a good cause, so he tells you he can’t vote for the law because it is unconstitutional.

We want to bar the products of child labor from interstate commerce.  The Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. The Supreme Court has agreed Congress has this power, especially when it is necessary to protect the health, the morals, the safety, and the welfare of the public.

We want to take the child out of industry so he can go to school, so he can go outside, so he may have more time for play.  I believe children have a God-given right to play.

Last year we spent $250,000,000 on our army.  What good is your army unless you have healthy American boys to join the army?  A New York paper reported that out of 168,000 men only a little over 40,000 could pass the Army physical test.  Taking children out of industry at an early age is important for national defense. 

The law is constitutional.  The law will cover the entire nation, because, as an earlier speaker said, “The nation is vitally interested in every child that opens its eyes under the American flag.” 

J. Lynn Barnard,  Factory Legislation in Pennsylvania:  Its History and Administration, 1907 (modified/link to original) 

Barnard was a professor of History for a Philadelphia college.  The Mr. Richards he refers to was the chairman of Committee on Domestic Manufactures: 

In 1830 Mr. Richards’ created a bill that would would have made it illegal for any cotton or woolen manufacturer to employ in his factory any minor between the age of twelve and eighteen years, unless said minor, or his, her or their parent or guardian, who could not show them a certificate signed by a respectable schoolmaster, or two respectable citizens of the county, that the said minor can read and write the English, German or some other modern language.  

Mr. Richards made a speech explaining "the bill only focused on factories who hire children.  There are thousands of children working in our factories.  Their work never stops from sunrise until night, except on Sundays, during the year”. 

If people say the parents are too poor to send their children to school, they should know most of our manufacturing districts have public schools. 

Patrick J. Hall, The Story of My Cotton Dress, The Child Labor Bulletin, 1914. (modified/link to original) 

The Bulletin was written by the Nation Child Labor Committee 

I HAVE HAD another accident! A big tear in my pretty new dress. This time I want to mend it. When we went to Atlanta Georgia, a few weeks ago, and saw the beautiful white cotton fields, mother told me how little boys and girls must help make most of the stuff used for our dresses. 

I used to think all other children had good times, and that going to school was very hard. Now I know better. I appreciate my dresses more since I know little boys and girls must pick the cotton for my dresses, while their backs grow tired and their heads ache.

On that trip Mother also took me to a cotton mill.  Some people say it is good for the girls and boys to work—that all children should be industrious.

But they do not stop to think that there is a right and a wrong kind of work for little girls and boys.  Spinning a little during a day could be the right kind.  Working in a spinning room from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. is the wrong kind. It keeps the children out of school, it gives them no chance to play, and they cannot grow strong. 

There are more than a million children in this country who do not have fresh air, or play, or go to school because they are working. 

If only everybody cared, and would not buy things children make, the factory men would work the fathers and not the children. 

Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House, 1910 (modified/link to original)  

 Jane Addams founded the Hull House to provide services such as English lessons for immigrants, daycare for children of mothers who were working, parenting classes, and playgrounds for children.  She campaigned to convince the government to increase services to those living in the slums of the urban cities. 

During the winter three boys from a Hull-House were injured on one factory’s machine which was missing a guard which would have only cost a few dollars. When the injury of one of these boys resulted in his death, we were sure the owners of the factory would share our horror and sadness.  We thought they would do everything possible to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. To our surprise they did nothing at all.  For the first time I saw one of the pathetic documents signed by the parents of working children.  It made parents say they will not sue the company for injuries resulting from their child’s "carelessness."

  In neighborhood sweatshops we saw children as young as four working.  But there was no legal solution, for the only child-labor law enforced in Illinois is for children working in mines.

   Mrs. Florence Kelley, from Hull-House, suggested the Illinois Government investigate child labor in Chicago sweatshops. Mrs. Kelley helped with the investigation.  When the report was presented to the Illinois government, a special committee was created to look into the Chicago conditions.  Members of this committee came to eat at Hull-House, our hopes ran high, and we believed that at last some of the worst problems under which our neighbors were suffering would be brought to an end.

Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House, 1910 (modified/link to original)     

Jane  Addams founded the Hull House to provide services such as English lessons for immigrants, daycare for children of mothers who were working, parenting classes, and playgrounds for children.  She campaigned to convince the government to increase services to those living in the slums of the urban cities. 

Each century has its problems.  Our’s is Child Labor

For the first time in history the labor of the little child is as valuable as that of an adult.  With the invention of machinery you no longer need skills, with the power of electricity, you no longer need strength.   Now a little child may work in a textile mill as well and in some ways better than a strong and clumsy man or woman. 

This temptation to use Child Labor is unique to this century.

Hospitals are seeing the consequences of Child Labor.  A man who died at the age of 33 died because he had run a sewing machine since he was six years old. The human body breaks down when it is put to work before it is ready.  Many diseases are caused by premature labor.  No horse trainer would treat his young horses this way, it would ruin them too.

But the pauperization of society itself is the most serious charge. The factories say to the community; you have educated the children in the public schools, now please give them to me for my factory. I will use them until they demand an adult’s wages and then I will turn them out again. If I have broken them down, the community will take care of them in the poorhouse and hospitals.

The community which allows this allows itself to be taken advantage of.

Alexander J. McKelway, Declaration of Dependence by the Children of America, 1913 - (modified/ source)

Whereas, We, Children of America, are declared to have been born free and equal, yet we are in slavery. We are forced to work the long day or the long night, with no control over the conditions of labor, as to health or safety or hours or wages, and with no right to the rewards of our service.

Resolved, I -- That childhood is endowed with certain inherent and inalienable rights, among which are freedom from toil for daily bread; the right to play and to dream; the right to the normal sleep of the night season; the right to an education, that we may have equality of opportunity for developing all that there is in us of mind and heart.

Resolved, II -- That we declare ourselves to be helpless and dependent; that we are and of right ought to be dependent, and that we hereby present the appeal of our helplessness that we may be protected in the enjoyment of the rights of childhood.

Resolved, III -- That we demand the restoration of our rights by the abolition of child labor in America. 

James J. Montague, A Song of the Factory, Journal of Education, 1907 (source)

The trees were white with blossoms, the meadows were broad and fair,

And the care-free birds made music for the children that played there.

But a man had a need of the meadows.  His walls and chimneys sprang

From among the swaying branches where the birds sang.

And the man had need of the children.   He gathered them in like sheep

And set them to work to earn his bread, for children are many and cheap.

The crouch all day by the spindles, wizened and wan and old.  

They have given their youth to a master who has made it into gold.

No longer they idly listen to a warbler’s futile song.

No longer their idle laughter rings out the whole day long.

No longer they roam the meadows like idle gypsy bands,

For the world is growing richer by the work of their puny hands,

And the man who found them playing among the feathery blooms

And brought them to watch their lives away beside his clattering looms,

He talks of the goodly riches that his enterprise has won

With the toil of the sad-faced children and boasts of the things he’s done!

Reverend Edgar Gardner Murphy, Presentation on Child Labor at the  Conference of the National Coordinating Committee on Children, 1903 (modified/link to original) 

Murphy was the founder of the Child Labor Committee of Alabama. 

The conditions of industry vary so greatly from state to state and from city to city that making a federal child labor law, and applying it to all situations, would be inadequate if not unfortunate.  We must all declare that the problem of child labor is a national problem. North and south, it belongs to all of us.

The south has one great natural product- cotton.  Upon the basis of this great natural product we are creating a great industry-cotton manufacture. 

What is the basis of this industry? What shall be its economic and moral character?  This is the question of child labor in the south. I am interested in the question of child labor, not only because I have photographed children of six and seven years whom I have seen at labor in our factories for twelve and thirteen hours a day, not only because I have seen them with their little fingers mangled by machinery and their little bodies numb with exhaustion, but because I am not willing that our economic progress should be involved in such conditions; and because I love the South, and I do not want her most important industry to stand under any sort of disgrace, moral or economic.

Fanny J. Crosby, “Hymn for the Working Children”, The Biglow & Main Co., 1912 (source)

There’s a voice that now is calling

Loudly calling, day by day;

‘Tis the voice of right and justice,

And it tones we must obey

We must hasten to the rescue

Of the children young and frail

Who are weary of their burdens,

And too soon their strength will fail

In our stores and shops we find them,

“Mid the bloom of early spring;

But the Lord is watching over them,

And their calls to Him we bring

Though their parents bid them labor

And deny their needed rest;

Yet our faith believes the promise,

That their wrongs will be redressed

Men of rank and high position,

Men who guard our native land

In the name of our Redeemer,

Come and lend a helping hand

Come at once: the plea is urgent

And the hours are waning still;

Make these children glad and happy,

And the law of love fulfil

President Theodore Roosevelt, Fifth Annual Message, 1905 (modified/link to original) 

Roosevelt's biography

The City of Washington should be a model city, it should be an example for all the rest of the country.  This should include factory laws to prevent all abuses in the employment of women and children in the District. 

The Department of Commerce and Labor should investigate the problems of child labor and child-labor legislation in each State.  

Many of  these problems could be solved by the States themselves, but it would be best for the Nation to encourage those States that are behind on the quality of their Child Labor laws to create laws as good as the other States.

We cannot afford to neglect the problem of turning out decent citizens for our country.   The future of the Nation depends upon the citizenship of the generations to come; the children of today are those who tomorrow will shape the destiny of our land, and we cannot afford to neglect them. 

The American Labor Year Book (source)

Carl Sandburg, "They Will Say" and "Mill Doors, Chicago Poems, Henry Holt and Co, 1916

Lewis Hines, Breaker boys, Hughestown Borough, Pennsylvania Coal Co

more Hines photos here, here and here

Google books of the The Child Labor Bulletin, Volume 2 and Volume 3

John Wilson Bengough, "The Child Labor Question", The Public, 1903 

PARENT: "No, Sir, I don't send 'em to work from greed, but because I've got to. 

But if I done it from downright Selfishness, what do you think of the Social conditions of a Republic that would turn parents into something worse than brutes?"

Two girls wearing banners with slogan "ABOLISH CHILD SLAVERY!!" 

in English and Yiddish, one carrying American flag; spectators stand nearby. Probably taken during May 1, 1909 labor parade in New York City.

Fredrikke Palmer, Women's Journal  1916 

In the five corners of the spider web are profit, greed, ignorance, indifference, poverty and luxury. 

Some Questions Answered, National Child Labor Committee poster, 1914 

Made in Alabama, National Child Labor Committee poster

Every Child Should Work, National Child Labor Committee poster

Child Labor is a National Menace, National Child Labor Committee poster

National Child Labor Committee poster, Are any of these reasons worth a Child's Life?

Child Labor Committee Poster, Children Not Needed By Industry

National Child Labor Committee, Homework Destroys Family Life

National Child Labor Committee, Making Human Junk

National Child Labor Committee, Permits and Inspection - Permits Protect

Lewis Hines, An Awful Blot, Life Publishing, 1914

Carl Meyers, National Child Labor Committee Cartoon.

Line of boys walks into a factory while a jobless man watches.  The sign reads “Help Wanted.  25 Boys.  No others need Apply.”

National Child Labor Committee poster, “High Cost of Child Labor”

 National Child Labor Committee poster, “Everybody Pays But Few Profit By Child Labor” 

Charles Raymond Macauley, "The Tread Mill”, New York World, 1913? 

Frederick T Richards. "Emaciated child laborers pulling chariot of rich, monstrous 'child labor exploiter." The North American [Philadelphia] 1913

 Carl Meyer, Woman (labeled "The state")  is leading children away from a factory and toward school, 

W. D. Haywood, Thief! "The Worst Thief Is He Who Steals The Playtime of Children", Industrial Workers Of The World,  1912

Explanation of cartoon

Library of Congress Resource with more Child Labor Cartoons

Outline of James Jefferson Britt’s Speech to the National Child Labor’s 12 Annual Conference on Child Labor, 1916 (modified/link to original) 

Britt, (R)North Carolina, delivered a speech at the  Conference, but he did not review the stenographer’s transcript of his speech and asked that it not be published. The Conference chose to publish the stenographer’s outline of Britt’s speech.  Britt's biography

Mr. Britt said that he had opposed the Keating bill on two grounds:

1. That it is unconstitutional because

   1.  Congress does not have the power to regulate manufacture.

   2. It boycotts articles that are not harmful, unlike the items such as lottery tickets, impure foods, etc. that Congress has already prohibited from interstate commerce.

   3.  The judiciary committee of the House said nine years ago that Congress has no right to pass a child labor law.

(2) That it is unhumanitarian because it throws the children out of their jobs and provides nothing for them except idleness and probable delinquency.

Mr. Britt said he did not want it thought that he objected to child labor legislation:  he supported another child labor law in North Carolina.  

But he could not support a measure like the Keating bill which would, in his opinion, be harmful to the welfare of the children.  He said the child labor law he wanted would “protect the morals of the child, save it from undue work, teach it lessons of uprightness and truth, and help support its widowed mother”.

Nathan B. Scott (R)West Virginia,  Speech to Congress, 1906 (modified/link to original)

 Scott was debating a Child Labor law for Washington D.C.  His biography.

I do not want people to think I am opposed to the education of the children of this country.  Many boys, one of whom I happened to have been, have had to make their living long before 16 years of age.   Many boys have to support his old mother and, perhaps, younger siblings.  Many a boy has to receive an education at a night school.

As I understand the bill, you are going to force boys to stop working.  You are going to place them in a position where they will not be allowed to earn anything for the support of themselves or their families.  You propose to say that they shall go to school.

Many of the local  schools are so full now that children are not able to attend even half a day, and they are forced to stay at home.

You may talk about the morals of the boys and girls under 16 being ruined.  What legislation could be worse for the morality of girls and boys than being forced by this law to remain idle and yet unable to attend school?

This bill compelling children to remain idle, would do them the greatest injustice this Senate could possibly inflict.   These boys are earning something for their mothers and fathers, and perhaps, and at the same time they are acquiring an education in a way. 

Mr.  President, there is a good deal of reform, moral preaching on honesty, in America.  A man named of Edwin Markham, wrote a magazine article saying he had visited the glasshouses and had seen children- boys and girls with emaciated forms, with their eyes, as it were, protruding from their sockets, all due to overwork.  He spoke of their little bodies being blistered by the hot furnaces, and a lot more of that kind of magazine stuff, but it is nothing but stuff.

I have been in the manufacture of glass for over 35  years.  If Mr. Markham had come to my factory to see the boys working there he would have found a different story.  He would have found an active, energetic group ready to play leapfrog, catch, hide and seek, and singing.

I am under the impression that he was not in a glass factory at all.  If he was, he misrepresented the conditions there.  The glasshouse boy of today becomes the glass manufacturer of tomorrow.  Most of the  manufacturers of glass in the city of Pittsburgh, or in the Ohio Valley,  learned his trade, starting from what we call “warming-in boys”.  They were boys who saved their money; boys who learned their trade well, and in the course of a few years became manufacturers.

If gentlemen are so anxious to have this bill become a law, I ask them to amend the bill.  This amendment would read, “who is not wholly dependent upon his own labor or who is not the sole support of a disabled father, or a widowed mother, or of a younger brother or sisters.”

In 1906 in a Congressional debate over a Child Labor law in Washington D.C., Senator Redfield Proctor (R)Vermont said... (link to original) 

Proctor's biography

I myself, like the Senator from Ohio, am a believer in the saving ordinance of work, and I know a great many boys who, I think, have been saved from harm by work, even at a comparatively early age. I believe many more are saved than are harmed, and in this city especially. It is one where there is a great official population, and there is employment for many boys as messengers, servants, etc. There are many families who I know would suffer seriously if this employment was cut off. If it is a question between the family starving and the child going to school, and at the same time having a chance to work outside in some decent employment, I should say give the child a chance to work. 

Herbert Johnson, “Dividends”, Life Publishing, 

Choices & Consequences (Source)

Although Congress passed the Keating-Owen Act and President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law, the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional in Hammer v. Dagenhart 247 U.S. 251 (1918) because it overstepped the purpose of the government's powers to regulate interstate commerce.

 In its opinion, the Court delineated between Congress's power to regulate production and commerce. 

A second child labor bill was passed in December of 1918 as part of the Revenue Act of 1919 (also called the Child Labor Tax Law). It also took an indirect route to regulate child labor, this time by using the government's power to levy taxes. It too, was soon found to be unconstitutional in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company 259 U.S. 20 (1922). 

The Court reasoned that “The power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce does not extend to curbing the power of the states to regulate local trade.”

Despite the nation's apparent desire for federal laws against child labor, the Supreme Court's rulings left little room for federal legislation. A constitutional amendment was soon proposed to give Congress the power to regulate child labor. But the campaign for ratification of the Child Labor Amendment was stalled in the 1920s by an effective campaign to discredit it. Opponents' charges ranged from traditional states' rights arguments against increases in the power of the federal government to accusations that the amendment was a communist-inspired plot to subvert the Constitution.

Federal protection of children would not be obtained until passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, which was also challenged before the Supreme Court. This time, the movement to end child labor was victorious. In February of 1941, the Supreme Court reversed its opinion in Hammer v. Dagenhart and, in U. S. v. Darby (1941), upheld the constitutionality of the Fair Labor Standards Act. It is still in force today.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) sets 14 as the minimum age for most non-agricultural types of work but limits the number of hours that may be worked for minors under age 16. It also prohibits minors under age 18 from working in any occupation that is deemed to be hazardous. (source)