Child labor in the United States

Child labor in the United States was a common phenomenon across the economy in the 19th century. Outside agriculture, it gradually declined in the early 20th century, except in the South which added children in textile and other industries. Child labor remained common in the agricultural sector until compulsory school laws were enacted by the states. In the North state laws prohibited work in mines and later in factories. A national law was passed in 1916 but it was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1918. A 1919 law was also overturned. In the 1920s an effort to pass a constitutional amendment failed, because of opposition from the South and from Catholics. Outside of farming child labor was steadily declining in the 20th century and the New Deal in 1938 finally ended child labor in factories and mines. Child labor has always been a factor in agriculture and that continues into the 21st century.
In an overwhelmingly rural society, farmers discovered that children as young as six or seven could usefully handle chores assigned along gender lines. In the cities, at a time when schools were uncommon outside New England, girls had household and child care chores while boys at about age 12 were apprenticed to craftsmen. Colonial America had as surplus of good farmland and a shortage of workers, so criminals in England kidnapped London youth to spirit them away for resale in Virginia. Parliament made it a priority to catch and prosecute offenders.
At the age of 13, orphan children were sent into a trade or domestic work due to laws that sought to prevent idle children from becoming a burden to society. In towns after 1810 or so the apprenticeship system gave way to factory employment for poor children, and school attendance for the middle classes.
New England began to industrialize after 1810, especially with textile mills that hired entire families. After 1840, mills started to shift a way from families, hiring older individuals especially new immigrants from Ireland and Canada.
As the North industrialized in the first half of the 19th century, factories and mines hired young workers for a variety of tasks. According to the 1900 census, of the children ages ten to fifteen 18 percent were employed: 1,264,000 boys and 486,000 girls. Most worked on family farms. Every decade following 1870, the number of children in the workforce increased, with the percentage not dropping until the 1920s. Especially in textile mills, children were often hired together with both parents and could be hired for only $2 a week. Their parents could both work in the mill and watch their children at the same time. Children had an advantage as their small statures were useful for fixing machinery and squeezing into small spaces. Many families in mill towns depended on the children's labor to make enough money for necessities. In mining towns, many parents often helped their children thwart child laws that did exist since miners were paid per carload of coal and any additional help to move the coal meant an increase in pay.
The reformers were crusading against factories, which they considered a debilitating to growing children and threatened to damage them permanently. They saw a farm labor as an entirely different matter—indeed, an American ideal. According to activist Alexander McKelway in 1905, open-air farm work was "beneficial in developing a strong physical constitution". Harvest season did not interfere with the scheduled school year, he added, and being under the beneficial and watchful eye of parents strengthened the family.
Using census data processed by Lee Craig, Robert Whaples concludes for the Midwest in the mid-19th century:
From 1910 to 1920, more than 60 percent of child workers in the United States were employed in agriculture. A son born into a farm family was worth real cash in terms of productivity and needing to hire less outside labor, as well as an heir to the family property. Some children preferred work over school since earning wages earned them respect in their homes, they were punished in the form of corporal punishment at school, and did not like to read or write instead of working.
According to Kent Hendrickson, two New Deal laws had a major impact on sugar beet farming in the Great Plains. The Jones-Costigan Act of 1934 and the Sugar Act of 1937 improved working conditions somewhat. However, they were written primarily to aid the growers and the sugar processing mills. Much of the field work was done by migrant Mexicans, who faced low wages, child labor and poor housing.
In the early 20th century, opponents of child labor cooperated with other Progressive Era reformers and American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions to organize at the state level. In 1904 a major national organization emerged, the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). In state after state reformers launched crusades to pass laws restricting child labor, with the ultimate goals of rescuing young bodies and increasing school attendance. The frustrations included the Supreme Court striking down two national laws as unconstitutional, and weak enforcement of state laws that impacted local business.
An effective tool was publicity, especially photographs in muckraking magazines that showed bad working conditions. The most successful of their crusaders was photographer Lewis Hine. In 1908 he became the photographer for the NCLC, which had good contact with the muckraking press. Over the next decade, Hine focused on the negative side of child labor. In the North, reformers were often successful in getting legislation on the books, but were disappointed when enforcement was handled by patronage appointees who proved reluctant to challenge the business community. Meanwhile, in the South legislation was opposed by rapidly growing mills that undercut Northern competitors with cheap wages. Starting in 1898, Montgomery, Alabama, minister Edgar Gardner Murphy crusaded to end child labor across the South but had little success.
In Congress a leading proponent was Senator Albert J. Beveridge Republican of Indiana. He tried—and failed—to get the first national bill passed. Unlike the Republican leadership, the Democratic leadership was not beholden to employers, and thus was more supportive of controls on child labor and other laws promoted by labor unions. Alexander McKelway (1866–1918), a staunch supporter of Woodrow Wilson, campaigned for such laws as the 1916 Keating–Owen Act. The Keating–Owen Act banned child labor but was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1918. A similar 1919 law was also overturned. In the 1920s an effort to pass a constitutional amendement failed, because of opposition from the South and from Catholics. The South finally passed compulsory school laws and by the late 1920s children under 15 were rarely hired by mills or factories. Finally in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 the New Deal successfully ended most child labor outside agriculture.
Newsboys sold the latest edition of daily newspapers on the street. They worked as contractors without benefits. Age was a disadvantage as younger boys collected more tips. The newspaper publishers needed their work and editors shielded them from child labor laws while romanticizing their entrepreneurial enterprise and downplaying their squalid life under dangerous conditions.
The most sweeping federal law that restricts the employment and abuse of child workers is the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Its child labor provisions were designed to protect the educational opportunities of youth and prohibit their employment in jobs that are detrimental to their health and safety. FLSA raised the coverage to youth under 18 years of age and lists hazardous occupations too dangerous for them to perform. It does not apply to agricultural workers, which has always been the arena for most child labor. Under the FLSA, for non-agricultural jobs, children under 14 may not be employed, children between 14 and 16 may be employed in allowed occupations during limited hours, and children between 16 and 17 may be employed for unlimited hours in non-hazardous occupations.
Many of the restrictions were temporarily put on hold in World War II, as enlarging factory employment became a national priority. The number of employed youth, ages 14 to 17, tripled from 870,000 in 1940 to 2.8 million in 1944, as high school enrollment dropped by one million. Motivating factors included patriotism, materialism, and dislike of school.
In agriculture, studies in the 1960s showed Hispanic and other families employed as farm laborers needed the income generated by their children. However the children showed severe educational retardation.
In 1980, David Koch pledged to "abolish" child labor laws as a part of his vice president campaign on the Libertarian ticket. In 1982, Ronald Reagan expanded the legal range of jobs permitted for children ages 14 and 15, and made it easier for employers to pay less than minimum wage.
States have varying laws covering youth employment. Each state has minimum requirements such as earliest age a child may begin working, number of hours a child is allowed to work during the day, number of hours a child is allowed to work during the week. The United States Department of Labor lists the minimum requirements for agricultural work in each state.
Individual states have a wide range of restrictions on labor by minors, often requiring work permits for minors who are still enrolled in high school, limiting the times and hours that minors can work by age and imposing additional safety regulations.
Koch funded organizations, Cato Institute, Foundation for Economic Education, and Commonwealth Foundation, produced reports arguing for the value of increased child labor and eliminating minimum wage for children. The Foundation for Government Accountability worked directly with state legislators to introduce bills eliminating regulations.
By 2023, states such as Arkansas, Iowa, New Hampshire, and New Jersey had loosened child labor restrictions following the lessening of the COVID-19 pandemic severity, with violations increasing nationwide as a tight labor market increased worker demand. Since 2021, at least 28 states have introduced legislation to weaken child labor laws and 12 states have passed them. Modifications included lowering the age in which children could work certain jobs, expanding the number of and timing of hours they could be required to work, often to include school time, and shielding businesses from civil liability for work-related injuries, illnesses, or deaths sustained by such workers. For example, legislation in Iowa would allow children to work in meat packing and light industry factories. According to the Economic Policy Institute, from 2015 to 2022, the number of minors employed in violation of child labor laws increased by 283% and the number of minors employed in violation of hazardous occupation orders increased by 94%. In response to this trend, in 2024 at least 14 states proposed new legislation to strengthen child labor laws.
Major recent incidents include Packers Sanitation Services employing children in slaughterhouses, and Hyundai employing children to operate heavy equipment, many against the threat of deportation. Exemptions in labor laws allowing children as young as 12 to work legally on commercial farms for unlimited hours remain in place. One estimate by Reid Maki, coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition at the National Consumers League, put the number of children working in agriculture in 2018 at between 300,000 and 400,000 children.
In 2023, a 16-year-old boy died in an accident at a Mississippi poultry plant. Just a month prior, it was revealed that meatpacking and produce firms were allegedly hiring underage migrants in at least 11 states. In Louisville, Kentucky, two 10-year-old children were illegally working at McDonald's, where they handled deep fryer equipment and worked as late as 2 a.m., receiving little to no payment, costing the franchise a $212,000 fine that would later reveal that more than 300 minors were illegally working for the establishment.