User:Naa1000441518/Child labor laws in the United States

History of children's labor for wages
Child labor began as a productive outlet for children during colonial times in America. At the age of 13, orphan children were sent into a trade or domestic work due to laws that sought to seek idle children from becoming a burden to society. Increased economic tensions between England and America created the desire for an independent manufacturing sector. Women and children were employed by manufacturing while the husband could tend to the farm at home. This practice, fulfilled the Jeffersonian ideal of yeoman father. As a national newsweekly magazine observed factory work was not for able bodied men rather "better done by six to twelve year old girls".

As the United States industrialized, technological changes increased the demand for child workers as assistants or substitutes. Especially in textile mills, children were often hired together with their parents and could be hired for only $2 a week. Children had a special disposition to working in factories and mines as their small statures were useful to fixing machinery and navigating the small areas that fully grown adults could not. Many families in mill towns depended on the children's labor to make enough money for necessities. In mining towns, many parents often helped their children thwart child laws that did exist since miners were paid per carload of coal and any additional help to load coal meant an increase in pay. According to the 1900 census, an estimated 1,750,178 children ages ten to fifteen were employed, constituting more than 18 percent of the industrial labor force. Every decade following 1870, the number of children in the workforce increased, with the percentage not dropping until after the Great War. From 1910 to 1920, more than 60 percent of child workers in the United States were employed in agriculture. Every boy born into a farm family was worth a thousand dollars. Children as young as three were sometimes found hurling berries. Some children preferred work over school since earning wages earned them respect in their homes, they were punished in the form of corporal punishment at school, and did not like to read or write instead of working.

Employment Certificates
The federal legal system had limited powers to pass child labor laws primarily due to the constitution that gave parents' right to raise their children as they pleased. It was a matter for the states to deal with and created their own child labor laws including age and schooling requirements. For regular, full-time work, "age and schooling certificates", "work permits", or "employment certificates" were issued in States to children, usually 14 or 15, before they may go to work in certain occupations, generally manufacturing, and mercantile. No certifications were required for agriculture, street trades, and work in private households.

Reformation of child labor laws
The start of the 20th century was the time when reform efforts became widespread. The National Child Labor Committee, an organization dedicated to the abolition of all child labor, was formed in 1904. By publishing information on the lives and working conditions of young workers, it helped to mobilize popular support for state-level child labor laws. These laws were often paired with compulsory education laws which were designed to curtail child labor to an extent, keep children in school, and out of the paid labor market until a specified age (usually 12, 14, or 16 years.) In 1906 Republican Senator Albert J. Beveridge introduced the first child labor bill at the national level that brought heightened attention to the topic. The bill was later turned down by President Roosevelt.

In 1916, under pressure from the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) and the National Consumers League, the United States Congress passed the Keating–Owen Act, outlawing interstate commerce involving goods produced by employees under the ages of 14,15 or 16, depending on the type of work. Southern Democrats were opposed but did not filibuster. President Woodrow Wilson had ignored the issue but now endorsed the bill at the last minute under pressure from party leaders who stressed how popular the idea was, especially among the emerging class of women voters. He told Democratic Congressmen they needed to pass this law and also a workman's compensation law to satisfy the national progressive movement and to win the 1916 election against a reunited GOP. Child labor had officially become an issue of concern to the federal government and it was the first federal child labor law. However, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918) because it regulated commerce that did not cross state lines. In 1919, Congress used its taxing power by passing a 10-percent tax on businesses that used child labor, but that was struck down by the Supreme Court in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture (1923). Child labor was finally ended in the 1930s.