LAD #23: Keating-Owen Child Labor Act
The act starts off with an alarming statistic: "The 1900 census revealed that approximately 2 million children were working in mills, mines, fields, factories, stores, and on city streets across the United States." This census sparked a national crusade against child-labor, as it should have. The conditions for the children working were dangerous and unsanitary, but children were seen as a cheap resource for labor, and they were small, so their tiny fingers and bodies could be used for tasks that adults themselves could not do because of their size. The first child labor bill, the Keating-Owen bill of 1916, was based on Senator Albert J. Beveridge's proposal from 1906 and used the government's ability to regulate interstate commerce to regulate child labor. The act banned the sale of products from any factory, shop, or cannery that employed children under the age of 14, from any mine that employed children under the age of 16, and from any facility that had children under the age of 16 work at night or for more than 8 hours during the day.