Child labor in the United States was a common phenomenon across the economy in the 19th century. Outside agriculture, it gradually declined in the early 20th century, except in the South which added children to textile and other industries. Child labor remained common in the agricultural sector until compulsory school laws were enacted by the states. A national law against child labor was passed in 1916, but it was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1918. A 1919 law was also overturned. In the 1920s, an effort to pass a constitutional amendment failed, because of opposition from the South and from Catholics. The Fair Labor Standards Act (part of the New Deal) in 1938 finally ended child labor in factories, mines, and other occupations. Child labor has always been a factor in agriculture and that continues into the 21st century.
There has been a large rise in child labor in the 2020s amid the COVID-19 pandemic, in sectors such as meat packing and light industry, with a tight labor market increasing worker demand. Several states have proposed or enacted measures to loosen restrictions and make it easier for employers to employ children.
History Colonial and early national
In an overwhelmingly rural society, farmers discovered that children as young as six or seven could usefully handle chores assigned along gender lines. In the cities, at a time when schools were uncommon outside New England, girls had household and child care chores while boys at about age 12 were apprenticed to craftsmen. Colonial America had a surplus of good farmland and a shortage of workers, so criminals in England kidnapped London youth to spirit them away for resale in Virginia. Parliament made it a priority to catch and prosecute offenders.Peter Wilson Coldham, "The 'Spiriting' of London Children to Virginia: 1648–1685". Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 83.3 (1975): 280-287. .
In many rural towns until the 1830 or so, the apprenticeship system gave way to factory employment for poor children, and school attendance for the middle classes.Sharon Braslaw Sundue, Industrious in Their Stations: Young People at Work in Urban America, 1720–1810 (University of Virginia Press, 2009).Claudia Goldin and Kenneth Sokoloff. "Women, children, and industrialization in the early republic: Evidence from the manufacturing censuses". Journal of Economic History 42.4 (1982): 741–774. At the age of 13, orphan children were sent into a trade or domestic work due to laws that sought to prevent idle children from becoming a burden to society. In the apprenticeship system, children whose parents died or are unable to support them were routinely placed outside of their homes under indenture contracts with a master who provided substance in exchange for the child’s labor. Many states during this period followed Pennsylvania's lead in enacting laws that prohibited matching children with masters who were of a different faith from the apprentice because of an expectation that masters should improve not only apprentices’ trade skills, but also their moral and religious upbringing.
In the 1840s, labor started to shift away from families, to hiring older individuals, especially new immigrants from Ireland and Canada.Barbara M. Tucker. "The family and industrial discipline in ante-bellum New England". Labor History 21.1 (1979): 55–74. .
19th century As the North industrialized in the first half of the 19th century, factories and mines hired young workers for a variety of tasks. According to the 1900 census, of the children ages ten to fifteen, 18 percent were employed: 1,264,000 boys and 486,000 girls. Most worked on family farms. Every decade following 1870, the number of children in the workforce increased, with the percentage not dropping until the 1920s.Bremner, 1971, 3:605–608. Especially in textile mills, children were often hired together with both parents and could be hired for only $2 a week.Bremner, 1971, 3:613–619. Their parents could both work in the mill and watch their children at the same time. Children had an advantage as their small statures were useful for fixing machinery and squeezing into small spaces. 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 move the coal meant an increase in pay.
Farming
Advocates for reform began crusading against factories, which they considered debilitating to growing children and threatened to damage them permanently. They saw farm labor as an entirely different matter—indeed, an American ideal. According to activist Alexander McKelway in 1905, open-air farm work was "beneficial in developing a strong physical constitution." Harvest season did not interfere with the scheduled school year, he added, and being under the beneficial and watchful eye of parents strengthened the family.William A. Link, The Paradox of Southern Progressivism 1880–1930 (1992) p. 170.
Using census data processed by Lee Craig,Lee A. Craig, To Sow One Acre More: Childbearing and Farm Productivity in the Antebellum North (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). Robert Whaples concludes for the Midwest in the mid-19th century:
From 1910 to 1920, more than 60 percent of child workers in the United States were employed in agriculture. A son born into a farm family was worth real cash in terms of productivity and needing to hire less outside labor, as well as an heir to the family property.Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Childhood on the farm: Work, play, and coming of age in the Midwest (2005) p. 48. 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.
According to Kent Hendrickson, two New Deal laws had a major impact on sugar beet farming in the Great Plains. The Jones-Costigan Act of 1934 and the Sugar Act of 1937 improved working conditions somewhat. However, they were written primarily to aid the growers and the sugar processing mills. Much of the field work was done by migrant Mexicans, who faced low wages, child labor and poor housing.Kent Hendrickson, "The Sugar-Beet Laborer and the Federal Government: An Episode in the History of the Plains in the 1930s". Great Plains Journal 3.2 (1964): 44+.
Early 20th century
In the early 20th century, opponents of child labor cooperated with other Progressive Era reformers and American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions to organize at the state level.Allen F. Davis, Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–1914 (1967) pp. 127–131.Irwin Yellowitz, Labor and the Progressive Movement in New York State, 1897–1916 (1965) pp. 49–51. In 1904, a major national organization emerged, the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC).Walter I. Trattner. Crusade for the children: A history of the National Child Labor Committee and child labor reform in America (1970). In state after state, reformers launched crusades to pass laws restricting child labor, with the ultimate goals of rescuing young bodies and increasing school attendance. The frustrations included the Supreme Court striking down two national laws as unconstitutional, and the weak enforcement of state laws that impacted local businesses.Roger W. Walker. "The AFL and child-labor legislation: An exercise in frustration". Labor History 11.3 (1970): 323–340.
An effective tool was publicity, especially photographs in muckraking magazines that showed bad working conditions. The most successful of their crusaders was photographer Lewis Hine. In 1908, he became the photographer for the NCLC, which had good contact with the muckraking press. Over the next decade, Hine focused on the negative side of child labor.Peter Seixas. "Lewis Hine: From 'social' to 'interpretive' photographer". American Quarterly 39#3 (1987): 381–409. . In the North, reformers were often successful in getting legislation on the books, but were disappointed when enforcement was handled by patronage appointees who proved reluctant to challenge the business community.Joseph M. Speakman. "The Inspector and His Critics: Child Labor Reform in Pennsylvania". Pennsylvania History 69#2 (2002) pp. 266–286. Meanwhile, in the South legislation was opposed by rapidly growing textile mills that undercut Northern competitors with cheap wages. Starting in 1898, Montgomery, Alabama, minister Edgar Gardner Murphy crusaded to end child labor across the South but had little success.Betsy Wood. Upon the Altar of Work: Child Labor and the Rise of a New American Sectionalism (University of Illinois Press, 2020). pp 51-83.
In Congress, a leading proponent was Senator Albert J. Beveridge Republican of Indiana. He tried—and failed—to get the first national bill passed.John Braeman. "Albert J. Beveridge and the First National Child Labor Bill". Indiana Magazine of History (1964): 1–36. Unlike the Republican leadership, the Democratic leadership was not beholden to employers, and thus was more supportive of controls on child labor and other laws promoted by labor unions.John S. Smith. "Organized labor and government in the Wilson Era; 1913–1921". Labor History 3.3 (1962): 265–286. Alexander McKelway (1866–1918), a staunch supporter of Woodrow Wilson, campaigned for such laws as the 1916 Keating–Owen Act.Herbert J. Doherty. "Alexander J. McKelway: Preacher to Progressive". Journal of Southern History 24.2 (1958): 177–190. The Keating–Owen Act prohibited shipment in interstate commerce of goods manufactured or processed by child labor.Walter I. Trattner. "The first federal child labor law (1916)". Social Science Quarterly (1969): 507–524. . 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. A similar 1919 law was also overturned. In the 1920s, an effort to pass a constitutional amendment failed because of opposition from the South and from Catholics.Richard B. Sherman. "The Rejection of the Child Labor Amendment". Mid America (1963) 45#1 pp. 3–17.Thomas R. Greene. "The Catholic Committee for the Ratification of the Child Labor Amendment, 1935–1937: Origin and Limits". Catholic Historical Review (1988) 74#2 pp. 248–269. . The South finally passed compulsory school laws and by the late 1920s, children under 15 were rarely hired by mills or factories. Finally, in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, the New Deal successfully ended most child labor outside agriculture.Davin C. Curtiss. "The Fair Labor Standards Act and child labor in agriculture". Journal of Corporation Law 20 (1994): 303ff.
Newsboys sold the latest edition of daily newspapers on the street. They worked as contractors without benefits. Age was a disadvantage as younger boys collected more tips. The newspaper publishers needed their work and editors shielded them from child labor laws while romanticizing their entrepreneurial enterprise and downplaying their squalid life under dangerous conditions.David E. Whisnant. "Selling the gospel News, or: The strange career of Jimmy Brown the Newsboy". Journal of Social History 5.3 (1972): 269–309. .
After 1933: Laws to reduce child labor