LAD #29 Keating-Owen Child Labor Laws

The census of 1900 helped the public to see the absurd amount of children working in factories and mines and mills. The National Child Labor Committee hired Lewis Hine to take photos of children in poor working conditions to add to the controversy in an attempt to make a change in the world. Charles Dickens also helped to show the bring the public opinion out especially with the novel 'Oliver Twist'. The Keating Owen Act forbade any interstate trade by factories who employed children under 14 and mines under 16, as well as poor working hours for children. This act was soon declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and so another law, the Revenue Act of 1919, but this was also found unconstitutional. The federal government had little it could do to regulate child labor so an amendment was called for. In 1938 the Fair Labor Standard Act was passed and then in 1941 it was proved constitutional which reversed the previous decision in Hammer v. Dagenhart.
This is an example of child labor in factories.