Child Labor During The Progressive Era

During the Industrial Revolution in the United States, labor laws regarding safety and the age of children who could work were non-existent. Unlike today, in a time where strict laws regarding the use of child labor are regarded and respected, during the times of early Industrialism, children worked alongside their parents in an effort to help their families economically. With the turn of the twentieth century came new ideas of the Progressive Era, which forever changed the laws surrounding the use of children in factories and other labor-intensive occupations. However, the struggle behind the efforts to change child labor laws was a long one. With events such as the Newsboy Strike in New York in 1899 to the creation of the Fair Labor Standards

This Act was created as a result of the Great Depression in 1929. The National Industrial Recovery Act was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who actively tried to regulate and stop child labor. This Act created rules that companies had to abide by. No children under eighteen could work in what were considered dangerous occupations, and children ages fourteen to sixteen could only work for three hours a day and in smaller less hazardous occupations, and only during the summer months. (Burgan) The National Industrial Recovery Act created The National Recovery Administration, which was permitted to make changes and regulate child labor, but when brought to the Supreme Court to decide its constitutionality, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in the A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corporation v. the United States case. The ruling stated that section three of the NIRA was unconstitutional because it allowed the President to regulate wages, hours, and minimum ages of workers and that it was without precedence. (A.L A. Schechter…) This was seen as a failed attempt at trying to regulate child labor but led to other

In 1938, Congress created the Fair Labor Standard Act. It stated that children under sixteen were strictly limited in the jobs they could perform. Like the NIRA, the Act was brought to the Supreme Court. In the case, United States vs. Darby, the Fair Labor Standards Act was ruled constitutional due to the Commerce Clause (“United States v. Darby”). The Commerce Clause gives Congress the power “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes” (US Const. Art. I, Cl. 3.). The Fair Labor Standards Act remained part of the regulations against child labor and was followed by the UN’s General Assembly Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948) and the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). Listed in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights is that “everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment” (UN General Assembly Art. XXIII). It was not until 1989 where the United Nations held The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which outlined where and what a child could do for work. Children were protected from exploitation and from being subjected to a dangerous workplace (“UN Convention…”). This Convention granted access to primary