In 1916, Congress for the first time attempted to regulate child labor with the Keating-Owen Act. Sponsored by Representative Edward Keating (D-Colo.) and Senator Robert Owen (D-Okla.) and supported by President Wilson, this measure barred goods produced by the labor of youths under 14 from being sold in interstate commerce. The use of child labor had been growing overtime, and by 1900 1 in 6 children between the ages of 10 and 15 were employed (Encyclopedia.com). After the upholding of the Mann Act against “white slavery” (the interstate travel of prostitutes) by the Supreme Court, advocates of child labor regulation thought they stood a good chance of enacting a federal law. However, legal scholars differed as to whether the Constitution permitted such a measure.
Edward Keating, House sponsor of the Keating-Owen Act.
Some legislator views on the matter:
William Stiles Bennet (R-N.Y.) stated that “Most of us from New York City are going to vote for this child-labor bill because we think it is right. We have a similar law, somewhat more drastic, on the statute books of New York, and we are for this…” (Congressional Record, 2015). This highlighted the fact that many states already had child labor laws on their books, and thus the impact of this law would not be felt on New York. Indeed, it would not actually be felt on all but four states, as they had comparable or stricter laws on child labor.
James F. Byrnes (D-S.C.), who would later become a key supporter of FDR’s New Deal, stated on the matter, “…I am opposed to this bill, but in the only speech I ever made on the subject in my own State I advocated the enactment by the Legislature of South Carolina of a law prohibiting absolutely the employment of children under the age of 14 years. According to the majority report there are but four States in the Union in which this standard provision does not prevail, so that it is boiled down to a question here whether the Congress will force those four States now to progress gradually toward the adoption of that 14-year age limit” (Congressional Record, 2014).
Mahlon Garland (R-Penn.) acknowledged that opinions on the measure’s constitutionality were divided, and to this he said, “…if we are going to err, for God’s sake, let us err on the side of humanity. Let us pass this bill. And if some court declares it unconstitutional, let it do so, but let us not stand here in an attitude of fear as to what the court will do and refuse to do the thing that ought to be done” (Congressional Record, 2032).
Fred Blackmon (D-Ala.) explained his opposition in a traditional Jeffersonian sense, “While I have always been a staunch advocate of proper legislation to safeguard the interests of children who of necessity are compelled to labor in manufacturing plants, yet as a Democrat I am a firm believer in the broad principle of our Government that the States are amply capable of taking care of their own affairs, without the interference of the Federal Government” (Congressional Record, 2034).
Some interesting details in this vote:
A number of representatives who had futures as New Deal opponents were voting in favor, including:
Isaac Bacharach (R-N.J.), Fred Britten (R-Ill.), Simeon Fess (R-Ohio), John Cooper (R-Ohio), Porter Dale (R-Vt.), Carter Glass (D-Va.), Frederick Lehlbach (R-N.J.), James Parker (R-N.Y.), Louis McFadden (R-Penn.), Carl Mapes (R-Mich.), George Tinkham (R-Mass.), Allen Treadway (R-Mass.), and Bert Snell (R-N.Y.). Although George Huddleston (D-Ala.), one of the votes for, was considered a progressive in this time, he would oppose much of the New Deal. Also a “yea” vote was former Speaker of the House Joe Cannon (R-Ill.), who I have yet to find a credible historian call a liberal or progressive. Indeed, his conservatism was even voiced in this debate,
“There is much talk about social justice. Great heavens, I sometimes wonder what it means! I have sent for the dictionary and I have tried to find out what social justice is. Can any man define it? Is it to make all men equal? Is it to make all men and women equal? Is it to make all boys of equal capacity? Well, so far as I know, as a rule the man and the woman who talk most about social justice are the man and the woman who have never earned a dollar but are living on the production that they inherited. They talk about social justice. Then there is another class that talks about it. They are good people, and I am not abusing any of them, but if you will go to work and investigate you will find that two thirds of them never earned a dollar in their lives and that the other third are being subsisted by their contributions” (Congressional Record, 2023).
The most glaring detail of the House vote? With only one exception, all the nays came from the South. The exception was R. Wayne Parker (R-N.J.), a staunch reactionary who based on his record seems to have been an absolutist for states’ rights and was so by opposing Prohibition, women’s suffrage, and anti-lynching legislation. All Florida as well as North and South Carolinian representatives who voted were against.
In the Senate, although few of its members in this time would carry on to the New Deal era, James W. Wadsworth Jr. (R-N.Y.) paired for this bill. Wadsworth was an anti-New Deal absolutist, as he would vote against Social Security and the minimum wage, yet he supported this measure. So did future President Warren G. Harding (R-Ohio) and future conservative Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland (R-Utah).
Perhaps, you say, but wait? Doesn’t this vote prove that the right back then had its heartland in the South? Well, no. If we examine another vote in that session of Congress that is often also seen as a triumph for progressivism in the Adamson Act, which limited the hours of railroad workers, its House vote of passage was the nearly as commanding 239-56, except the situation with the opposition was the inverse…of the House opponents only two were from the South: Sam Sells (R-Tenn.) and Eugene Black (D-Tex.). Indeed, the only two representatives on record who voted against both the Keating-Owen Act and the Adamson Act were Parker and Black. This and the fact that child labor was far more prevalent in the South in addition to the status quo only changing in four Southern states makes it abundantly clear to me that the Keating-Owen Act is a regional rather than a left-right vote. But, does this make the Adamson Act a regional vote too? No, as the prevalence of railroads and their workers was all around the country, and Southerners generally were interested in curbing what they saw as excesses of Yankee capitalism. Furthermore, crossover support for the Adamson Act in the North was far more considerable than the Keating-Owen Act in the South. Additionally, the DW-Nominate scale on this vote clearly points to the most conservative legislators of American politics at the time voting for Keating-Owen while it simultaneously points to them voting against the Adamson Act. Other votes that put the South on the bad side of conservatism in the Wilson era included support for the excess profits tax, support for an anti-trust investigation into companies involved in food production (although there was some dissent among Southerners), opposition to increasing the size of the navy, opposing limiting the time for government control of the railroads in wartime, opposition to using a stopwatch for measuring efficiency in government workers, and opposition to the Esch-Cummins Act returning railroads to private ownership in peacetime under conditions that were on net favorable to them.
The Keating-Owen Act was challenged in the Supreme Court and overturned in 1918 in Hammer v. Dagenhart. Another effort to enact such a law also was struck down by the Supreme Court. Although the proposed Child Labor Amendment was never ratified, it was not considered needed after the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 and its upholding in the Supreme Court. But what people don’t know (indeed I didn’t know this until I looked into it) that this law only changed the status quo on child labor in only four states! Indeed, such a rule could serve to help the other states against the four states in competition, thus there was every reason for support outside of the South to be so strong.
References
Calendar Wednesday – Child-Labor Bill. (1916, February 2). Congressional Record, 2007-2035.
Retrieved from
Keating-Owen Act. Encyclopedia.com.
Retrieved from
https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/keating-owen-act
To Pass H.R. 17700 (39 Stat. 721, Sept. 3, 1916). A Bill to Establish an 8 Hour Day for Employees of Carriers Engaged in Interstate and Foreign Commerce. (P. 13608-1). Voteview.
Retrieved from
https://voteview.com/rollcall/RH0640095
To Pass H.R. 8234 (39 Stat. 675, 9-1-16), a Bill to Prevent Interstate Commerce in the Products of Child Labor (NP. 12312-2). Voteview.
Retrieved from
https://voteview.com/rollcall/RS0640214
To Pass H.R. 8234 (39 Stat. 675, Sept. 1, 1916), a Bill to Prevent Interstate Commerce in the Products of Child Labor and for Other Purposes (P. 2035-1). Voteview.
Retrieved from
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 