Children and the FLSA

   

Children are such a crucial part of this world. They not only are the future of our country, but they bring joy and light into everyday. Before the Fair Labor Standards Act was developed in 1938, children were allowed to work in unfit conditions at young ages without any protection from the government. According to Todd Postol, in 1900 there were over 1.7 million child laborers in the United States, which did not even include children under the age of 10. "In New York state alone, one scholar has estimated, 400,000 children between the ages of 5 and 18 were in the labor force" (pg 349, Postol). If children are truely the ones that bring sunshine to our lives everyday, then how did the US government allow for such mistreatment of our children?

Child Labor in North Carolina Textile Mills

      Throughout the early 1900s, the United States federal government made many attempts at developing an effective child labor law. Some of the different laws they tried to successfully enact were the Voss Dangerous Trades Act of 1909, the Keating-Owen Act of 1916, and others. Around the same time, the National Child Labor Committee developed, which, "Over the next forty years, it would be in the forefront of the struggle to eliminate child labor in the United States" (pg 350, Postol). Finally in 1938, the government enacted the Fair Labor Standards Act, which seemed to have all of the ideas of the Keating-Owen Act and other previous ideas, but combined into one overarching child labor law. It was much more universal, and led the country to believe that abusive and unsafe child labor was a thing of the past. Unfortunately, the FLSA did not enforce the child labor rights over children working in migrant agriculture (which were primarily black American children).
     Because minimum wage was enacted for all industries in the United States and children were now restricted on working, many people lost jobs and opportunities. Although the changes to child labor in the US was beneficial in many ways, children were a primary form of income for families at that time, so families no longer had as steady of an income. The people that were affected the most from the FLSA were "...namely blacks, females, younger workers, and workers living in rural farm areas" (pg 23, Kau). Many people lost their jobs because their companies could not afford the new minimum wage for all of their workers.

Child Labor Campaigns

     In the United States today, many people are still marginalized in the workforce because of their race and age. During the era of the development of the Fair Labor Standards Act, Americans working in agricultural industries, who were primarily black, were not necessarily protected under the legislation of the new child labor laws. Today in America, black Americans are often not given the same opportunities for health protection under the United States government because of the many underlying structural divisions in our economy. The effects of the FLSA are still very apparent today, and resurface in many different ways.