Essay Example on Child labor the extreme interference with children

Child labor the extreme interference with children and their childhood Many children across the world are forced to work under harsh conditions that can inevitably take away their sanity This paper is going to be directly written towards the people and government laws and how they are helping and how they re not Many people and governments have aided the enforcement of the stop of child labor The U S COngress passed two laws both in 1918 and 1922 but the Supreme Court articulated both of them unconstitutional In 1924 Congress declared a constitutional amendment keeping child labor under strict control but the states did not ratify it Then in 1938 congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act The Labor Standards Act is The Fair Labor Standards Act helps minimum wage overtime pay and child labor standards affecting full time and part time workers in the private sector and in Federal State and local governments We meet a man named John Peter Altgeld was elected governor of Illinois Soon afterwards he managed to convince the state legislature to pass legislation controlling child labor Florence Kelley was the first chief factory inspector 

In 1912 President William Taft created the Children's Bureau to investigate and report upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of children and child life among all classes of our people Taft appointed Julia Lathrop a member of the Hull House settlement as the chief of the bureau Over the next nine years Lathrop directed research into the dangers of child labor Alice Hamilton was one of those involved in this research and she provided evidence that industrial toxic substances such as lead nitrous fumes and viscose rayon were causing serious side effects including mental illness loss of vision paralysis and sometimes death In 1916 Congress made its first effort to control child labor by passing the Keating Owen Act The legislation forbade the transportation among states of products of factories shops or canneries employing children under 14 years of age of mines employing children under 16 years of age and the products of any of these employing children under 16 who worked at night or more than eight hours a day In 1918 the Supreme Court ruled that the Keating Owen Act was unconstitutional After the Supreme Court ruled that the Keating Owen Act was unconstitutional Congress passed a Second Child Labor Law 

This levied a tax of ten per cent on the net profits of factories employing children under the age of 14 and of mines and quarries employing children under the age of 16 This legislation was declared unconstitutional as a result of the Drexel Furniture Company case in 1922 Grace Abbott who had replaced Julia Lathrop as head of the Children's Bureau in 1921 advocated that the only way this problem could be solved was by a change in the Constitution In 1924 Congress passed an amendment to the Constitution giving itself the right to regulate child labor under 16 years of age However only 28 states ratified this Amendment Frances Perkins who had been recruited to the campaign against child labour after hearing a speech on the subject by Florence Kelley in 1902 was appointed as the Secretary of Labor in 1933 by the new president Franklin D Roosevelt She therefore became the first woman in American history to hold a Cabinet post Perkins immediately tried to persuade Roosevelt to bring an end to child labour However it was not until June 1938 that Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act The main objective of the act was to eliminate labor conditions detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standards of living necessary for health efficiency and well being of workers This included the prohibition of child labour in all industries engaged in producing goods in interstate commerce It set the minimum age at 14 for employment outside of school hours in non manufacturing jobs at 16 for employment during school hours and 18 for hazardous occupations