LAD#23 - Keating-Owen Act

The 1900 census revealed an immense number of child laborers thus sparking a movement to end child labor in the United States. In 1908, the Nation Child Labor committee hired Lewis HIne to photograph and report on the atrocities of child labor, which had detrimental effects on the wellbeing and welfare of children who worked. One of the most successful attacks was Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist. The Keating-Owen bill of 1916 was the first child labor bill based on the government's ability to control interstate commerce to regulate child labor. The bill banned the sale of products from places which used child labor, but was ultimately deemed unconstitutional in Hammer v. Dagenhart, where child labor was considered to be local trade. A constitutional amendment was then proposed, but was later stalled by an effective campaign in the 1920s against it. The first successful labor law was the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.