Keating-Owen Child Labor Act Passed, First Federal Child Labor Restriction

Congress passed the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act in September 1916, the first federal statute to impose restrictions on child labor. Also known as Wick’s Bill, the law prohibited the sale in interstate commerce of goods produced by factories that employed children under 14, mines that employed children younger than 16, and any facility where children under 14 worked after 7:00 p.m., before 6:00 a.m., or more than eight hours daily. The basis for the action was the Commerce Clause, giving Congress authority to regulate interstate commerce. President Woodrow Wilson signed the legislation as part of Progressive Era efforts to protect children from industrial exploitation.

However, the law was short-lived. In Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918), the Supreme Court struck down the Keating-Owen Act in a 5-4 decision, ruling that it exceeded federal authority and represented an unwarranted encroachment on state powers to determine local labor conditions. Justice William R. Day’s majority opinion held that the Commerce Clause did not give Congress power to regulate working conditions. In a stinging dissent, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes argued that earlier Supreme Court decisions had established Congress enjoyed broad powers to regulate interstate commerce and that the statute did not impinge on states’ rights to regulate their own internal affairs. A second child labor bill passed in December 1918 as part of the Revenue Act of 1919 (the Child Labor Tax Law), taking an indirect route by using taxation power, but it too was found unconstitutional in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company (1922).

Federal protection of children would not be obtained until passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, and in February 1941 the Supreme Court finally reversed Hammer v. Dagenhart. The Keating-Owen Act’s fate exemplifies the judicial capture that characterized the Progressive Era, with a corporate-friendly Supreme Court systematically striking down democratic reforms under the guise of constitutional interpretation. The twenty-two year gap between the first child labor law and effective federal protection reveals how corporations weaponized the judiciary to perpetuate the exploitation of children for profit—one of the most egregious examples of legal system capture in American history.