National Child Labor Committee - Fighting Against Child Labor

Fighting Against Child Labor

Immediately after its conception in 1904, the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) began advocating for child labor reform on the state level. A number of state-centered campaigns were organized by the NCLS's two regional leaders, Owen Lovejoy in the northern states and Alexander McKelway in the southern states. Both Lovejoy and McKelway actively organized investigations of child labor conditions and lobbied state legislatures for labor regulations.

Although the NCLC made some strides in the north, by 1907, McKelway and the NCLC had achieved little success in enlisting the support of the southern people and had failed to pass any far-reaching reforms in the south's important mill states. Consequently, the NCLC decided to refocus its state-by-state attack on child labor and endorsed the first national anti-child labor bill, introduced to congress by Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana in 1907. Although the bill was later defeated, it convinced many opponents of child labor that a solution lay in the cooperation and solidarity between the states.

In response, the NCLC called for the establishment of a federal children's bureau that would investigate and report on the circumstances of all American children. In 1912 the NCLC succeeded in passing an act establishing a United States Children's Bureau in the Department of Labor and Department of Commerce. On April 9 President William Taft signed the act into law, and over the next thirty years the Children's Bureau would work closely with the NCLC to promote child labor reforms on both the state and national level.

In 1915, the NCLC, facing the varied success and inherent limitations of it efforts at the state level, decided to move its efforts to the federal level. On its behalf, Pennsylvania Congressman A Mitchell Pamlmer (later Attorney General) introduced a bill to end child labor in most American mines and factories. President Wilson found it constitutionally unsound and after the House voted 232 to 44 in favor on February 15, 1915, he allowed it to die in the Senate. Nevertheless, Arthur Link has called it "a turning point in American constitutional history" because it attempted to establish for the first time "the use of the Commerce Clause commerce power to justify almost any form of federal control over working conditions and wages."

In 1916, Senator Robert L. Owen of Oklahoma and Representative Edward Keating of Colorado introduced the NCLC backed Keating-Owen Act which prohibited shipment in interstate commerce of goods manufactured or processed by child labor. The bill passed by a margin of 337 to 46 in the House and 50 to 12 in the Senate and was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson as the centerpiece of The New Freedom Program. However, in 1918 the law was deemed unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in a five-to-four decision in Hammer v. Dagenhart. The court, although acknowledging child labor as a social evil, felt that the Keating-Owen Act overstepped congress' power to regulate trade. The bill was immediately revised and again deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

The NCLC then switched its strategy to passing of a federal constitutional amendment. In 1924 Congress passed the Child Labor Amendment with a vote of 297 to 69 (with 64 abstaining) in the house and 61 to 23 (12 abstaining) in the senate. However, by 1932 only six states had voted for ratification, while twenty-four had rejected the measure. Today, the amendment is technically still-pending and has been ratified by a total of twenty-eight states, requiring the ratification of ten more for its incorporation into the Constitution.

In 1938 the National Child Labor Committee threw its support behind the Fair Labor Standards Act which included child labor provisions designed by the NCLC. The act prohibits any interstate commerce of goods produced through oppressive child labor. The act defines "oppressive child labor" as any form of employment for children under age sixteen and any particularly hazardous occupation for children ages sixteen to eighteen. This definition excludes agricultural labor and instances in which the child is employed by his or her guardians. On June 25, 1938, after the approval of Congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the bill into law; to this day the Fair Labor Standards Act remains the preeminent tool for enforcing and protecting the rights of American children.

For the entirety of World War II, the NCLC kept vigil to make sure that employment shortages caused by the war did not weaken the newly passed and implemented child labor laws, and that children were not drawn back into the mines, mills and streets.