LAD #23: Keating-Owen Child Labor Act

The 1900 census revealed that approximately 2 million children were working in mills, mines, fields, factories, stores, and on city streets across the United States. This statistic marked a national movement against child-labor. The conditions were dangerous and unsanitary, but since children were small and cheap big business saw them as the perfect workers. The Keating-Owen bill of 1916, was based on Senator Albert J. Beveridge's proposal from 1906. It used the government's right to regulate interstate commerce to regulate child labor conditions. The act banned the sale of products from corporations that employed children under the age of 14 for most business‘s, from any mine that employed children under the age of 16, and from any facility that had children under the age of 16, work at night, or for more than 8 hours during the day.