“If there is one problem that civilized nations have agreed upon, it is the evil of premature and excessive child labor.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said so. More than a century later, the debate is heating up again. In recent months, 10 states have introduced or passed laws weakening labor protections for minors, even in notoriously dangerous industries such as meat packing. Increasingly, existing laws limiting the hours and types of work children can engage in are not enforced. Over the past year, the number of illegally employed minors, including children as young as 13, has increased by 37 percent.
Holmes’ comments are a reminder that there is a long and terrifying backstory behind today’s efforts to revive child labor. Few who advocate the weakening of child labor protection today would admit it, but the advocacy of child labor has historically been based on social Darwinism, which states that people are not equal and do not deserve equal chances in life. associated with the belief in
Holmes commented in his 1918 challenge to a Supreme Court ruling overturning a federal law seeking to limit child labor. Child labor was common at the time. By one estimate, between 1890 and 1910, nearly 20% of American children aged 10 to 15 worked in industrial settings. Some jobs, such as cleaning narrow chimneys or crawling under machines to retrieve lost items or scraps of cloth, are particularly suitable for a five-year-old or her six-year-old due to their short stature. was thought.
The general trend in “civilized” countries, as Holmes put it, was to keep children out of the workplace so that they could attend school and improve their lives through education. In the United States, this was primarily accomplished through state law. But manufacturers criticized the laws for creating an unlevel playing field. For manufacturers, state restrictions on child labor put them at a disadvantage compared to competitors in states without such restrictions. A manufacturing company in South Carolina even said that a bill banning the employment of children under the age of 12 could be called “a bill to stop manufacturing in South Carolina.” Congress passed federal legislation to level the playing field. When the Supreme Court overturned this law on constitutional grounds, amending the constitution was the obvious choice.
The passage of the Child Labor Amendment in 1924, which gave Congress the power to “restrict, regulate, and prohibit the labor of any person” under the age of 18, is conspicuously forgotten in U.S. history. If it is ratified by the state. , it would have been the 20th Amendment. But business leaders rallied against this.
This corporate effort relied heavily on denying the facts of child labor and spreading false, misleading and dishonest arguments.An example is taken from an industry newsletter Southern Textile News, The editor ran an ad claiming that the amendment would prevent boys from doing farm work and girls from washing dishes. This was misleading because the amendment simply gave Congress the power to pass federal legislation (although it did not specify what it contained). Existing state laws always exempted agricultural labor. And even the most ardent reformers were not against housework.
In another example, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), then the nation’s largest trade association, claimed (without evidence) that “the nature and extent of child labor are grossly exaggerated.” The group argued the amendment was a power grab to allow Congress to control “the work and education of all persons under the age of 18 to the extent not currently permitted by any ordinary nation.” bottom. Both of these claims were false. The fact of child labor is well documented and the amendment makes no mention of education.
The NAM also developed a slippery argument, arguing that the government would eventually use the amendments to further extend its powers. And he went red picking, arguing that the 20th Amendment was “socialist in its origins, philosophy, and relevance.” A pamphlet published by the NAM states that the Fourth International Communist Congress in 1922 declared its intention to abolish all wage labor by children under the age of 18, saying that since the Communists wished to abolish child labor, If so, it suggests that any American claiming the same must be a communist. that too. Utah Senator William H. King declared the amendment to be “communist and Bolshevik.” [sic] Diagram. “
These claims were rooted in pernicious ideas about inequality and opportunity. Many of the advocates of child labor were social Darwinists who believed that people were inherently unequal. They associated child labor laws with socialism. Because the law enforced equality assumptions they rejected, such as that all children should attend school. They argued that the “natural place” for some children (as well as some adults) is the factory. Usually this referred to immigrants, especially the children of Catholic and Jewish immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe.
Child labor was finally regulated in 1938, when Congress passed (and was upheld by the Supreme Court) the Fair Labor Standards Act, which outlawed child labor in hazardous occupations, including coal mining, firefighting, and most meat processing, among others. bottom. Combined with better wages for adults (making it less likely for families to feel the need to send their children to work) and increased compulsory education, child labor in the US industry has fallen dramatically.
Today we see many old arguments being revived to reverse a century of social progress. Child labor is a good example. Proponents of weakening protections for children argue that states, not the federal government, should decide. Attempts to regulate the workplace represent a federal power grab. And that it is the socialists who (unfairly) seek to level the playing field who advocate for strict restrictions on child labor. Underlying these discussions is the same ideological framework that prevailed in the 1920s. It is an anti-government ideology promoted by business leaders who widely oppose government regulations, pollute the air, run unsafe workplaces, and seek the “freedoms” that deprive immigrant children of any chance to succeed in society. school and beyond.
This is an opinion and analysis article and the views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the author. Scientific American.
