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Child labor in America : the epic legal struggle to protect children / John A. Fliter.

by Fliter, John A., author.

Lawrence, Kansas : University Press of Kansas, [2018]

Description:

viii, 319 pages ; 25 cm

Contents:

From public good to moral evil: state laws and child labor in the 1800s -- Divided, we fall: the Beveridge-Parsons bill -- Regulating child labor as interstate commerce: the Keating-Owen act and Hammer v. Dagenhart -- Taxing profits of companies using child labor: Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company -- Congress proposes the "Children's Amendment" -- The great depression and renewed fight over the child labor amendment -- The Fair Labor Standards Act and final victory in United States v. Darby Lumber -- Contemporary child labor issues -- Postscript: those truly stupid child labor laws -- Chronology of events -- States ratifying the proposed 1924 Child Labor Amendment -- Cases cited -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

Summary:

Child labor law strikes most Americans as a fixture of the country's legal landscape, involving issues settled in the distant past. But these laws, however self-evidently sensible they might seem, were the product of deeply divisive legal debates stretching over the past century and even now are subject to constitutional challenges. Child Labor in America tells the story of that historic legal struggle. The book offers the first full account of child labor law in America from the earliest state regulations to the most recent important Supreme Court decisions and the latest contemporary attacks on existing laws. Children had worked in America from the time the first settlers arrived on its shores, but public attitudes about working children underwent dramatic changes along with the nation's economy and culture. A close look at the origins of oppressive child labor clarifies these changing attitudes, providing context for the hard-won legal reforms that followed. Author John A. Fliter describes early attempts to regulate working children, beginning with haphazard and flawed state-level efforts in the 1840s and continuing in limited and ineffective ways as a consensus about the evils of child labor started to build. In the Progressive Era, the issue finally became a matter of national concern, resulting in several laws, four major Supreme Court decisions, an unsuccessful Child Labor Amendment, and the landmark Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Fliter offers a detailed overview of these events, introducing key figures, interest groups, and government officials on both sides of the debates and incorporating the latest legal and political science research on child labor reform. Unprecedented in its scope and depth, his work provides critical insight into the role child labor has played in the nation''s social, political, and legal development. "---Provided by publisher.

Most Americans today do not give child labor laws much thought. If we think of it at all, we see it as a concern over there or in the distant past. But child labor was a prominent policy issue in American politics for nearly a century. Children worked ever since the first settlers arrived, and they continued to do so in unhealthy and dangerous conditions well into the twentieth century. The regulation of working children began in the 1840s at the state level, but these laws were limited and ineffective, and child labor laws faced opposition from industry and religious leaders. The issue became a matter of national concern during the Progressive Era, resulting in several laws, four major Supreme Court decisions, an unsuccessful Child Labor Amendment, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, a landmark piece of legislation. Child Labor in America is a comprehensive constitutional history of child labor in the United States, the first to tell the full story of the political and legal battles involving working children from the early nineteenth century to the present day ---Provided by publisher.

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