Wage-rates for junior workers should be based on the capacity of the worker relative to adult capacity, and not on an arbitrary age basis. If these principles are fully incorporated and the codes are effectively enforced, child labor will be eliminated from the major industries of the United States for the two-year period of the emergency. But this does not mean that the child-labor fight has been won. Previous experience indicates that when a period of unemployment begins to abate and industry picks up, the number of children entering industry tends to increase. When the first Federal Child Labor Law was declared unconstitutional, there was a prompt restoration of a longer working day for children and an increase in the number of such working children.
Child labor is an evil at any time.
The depression has brought to the fore the economic unsoundness of employing children while adults are idle, but from the humanitarian point of view, there will be need for child-labor control long after the depression has passed. Efforts for ratification cannot be relaxed. We must press on toward the goal of ratification in thirty-six states by 1935 so that a federal law can be enacted as soon as the codes cease to operate and child labor can be eliminated once and for all.