LAD #29: Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916

Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916

Summary: By the turn of the century, popular outcry against child labor had become extremely significant, in large part due to the works of contemporary authors and speakers. The Keating-Owen Act used the federal power to control interstate commerce to ban the sale, purchase, or transportation of goods produced by child laborers. This might have been effective, however it was soon overturned by the Supreme Court as an unconstitutional overextension of the federal government's powers. 

(It would take another twenty years for actual anti-child labor laws to be signed into law and then be supported by the supreme court, in the form of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938).