child labor laws

Laws passed over many decades, beginning in the 1830s, by state and federal governments, forbidding the employment of children and young teenagers, except at certain carefully specified jobs. Child labor was regularly condemned in the nineteenth century by reformers and authors ( see David Copperfieldand Oliver Twist), but many businesses insisted that the Constitution protected their liberty to hire workers of any age. In several cases in the early twentieth century, the Supreme Court agreed, declaring federal child labor laws unconstitutional. Eventually, in the late 1930s, the federal Fair Labor Standards Act was upheld by the Court. This law greatly restricts the employment of children under eighteen in manufacturing jobs.

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The problem: pesky state child labor laws requiring that minors work a maximum eight hours a day when school is not in session.

This is where child labor laws and child-protective services come in.

The national government has encouraged the states in the enactment of stringent child-labor laws.

The passage and enforcement of rigid anti-child-labor laws which will cover every portion of this country.

Although child labor laws have been enacted in many states and by the United States Congress, they are comparatively recent.

Many parents make their children work where the compulsory education law and the child labor laws are not enforced.

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