LAD 23: Keating-Owen Child Labor Act

In times of heavy labor and the threat to many company’s of being exposed, a shocking report in 1900 was drawn up which showed the immense number of children involved in poor child labor throughout the United States, first sparking a movement. In 1908, the Nation Child Labor Committee came up with an idea to hire a photographer named Lewis Hines, to report on the “atrocities of child labor.” They were trying to show people how significant and terrible conditions for these children were and would stop at nothing to get what information they needed to show the effects on child wellbeing. The Keating-Owen Bill of 1916, was one of the first child labor laws passed after the governments control of interstate commerce. In the Governments hope of regulating child labor, the bill was able to ban the sale of products from places that used child labor eventually being said to be unconstitutional. Only a few years after this Bill was proposed, a heavily effective campaign came into play which went against the governments proposition for a set constitional amendment, and the first successful law of labor became the Fair Standards Act of 1938.