Dorothy Thompson

Philadelphia Inquirer/March 5, 1937

If the Republicans have a grain of political sagacity left, they will not oppose the President’s Judiciary plan in the National Congress and at the same time fail to uphold the Child Labor Amendment In the States.

For it is quite certain that no settlement of the constitutional crisis will be satisfactory to the people of the country which is not broad enough to allow Congress to regulate the labor of minors. It will be hard to advocate convincingly a constitutional amendment instead of the President’s plan to pack the Supreme Court, if the child labor amendment, which has been pending for many years, and which has the support of leading members of all parties and the indorsement of labor and women’s organizations, falls to be ratified.

Propaganda at Work

A VAST amount of nonsense has been talked about this amendment. It is said that it gives the Federal Government the right to control, in the most minute detail, the education and home life, school and play-tlme activities of all young persons in the United States under 18 years of age.

The National Committee for the Protection of Child, Family, School and Church is putting out propaganda, all of it misleading and some of it vicious, picturing children in Fascist uniforms, and suggesting that the ratification of the Child Labor amendment means the total regimentation of youth.

An Enabling Act

NOW, the National Child Labor Amendment will mean In law exactly what the people of the United States, through their elected representatives, from North and South, Catholic and Protestant, intend that it shall mean. The Child Labor Amendment does not pass a law. It is an enabling act, simply that and nothing more. It gives Congress the power to “limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under 18 years of age.”

Its opponents claim the dictionary’s definition of “labor” would permit Congress to legislate concerning home and school life, but there is no legal justification whatever for this interpretation of the word. There are plenty of court opinions on the meaning of “labor” and none of them cover home chores or learning in school. There is not an instance in history where “labor” has been interpreted to mean “education.”

Tested Three Years

A FEDERAL child labor law was actually once in force in this country for three years, with none of the dire consequences predicted by the opponents of the amendment. That law was passed in 1919, under the Wilson Administration, and operated until 1922 when it was terminated by the Supreme Court. That law was based on the taxing power of Congress, after a previous law passed in 1916 and based on the interstate commerce power that had been declared unconstitutional, with Justice Holmes, representing the four dissenters, delivering one of his more famous opinions. That Child Labor law, during its operation, was administered at a cost of $125,000 a year and with a little staff of 51 people. There was no interference in the schools or homes, or on the playgrounds. It was enforced as a labor law. with Federal Inspectors confining themselves exclusively to places of employment.

Child labor was again prohibited in the NRA codes and I’ve yet to hear from a single person who objected to these provisions of the codes as they worked out in practice.

A Vanishing Bogey

THAT Congress, if given the power to enact laws to abolish child labor, would set out to destroy the family, school and church, while depending for their own offices on the votes of their constituents, is a bogey which fades out upon a little thought. An amendment similar to the one pending had the support 30 years ago of the conservative Senator and historian, Albert J. Beveridge. If I remember correctly, the first person to make a public speech in behalf of the present amendment was Herbert Hoover. And there is a large and distinguished committee of Catholic citizens who are urging its ratification.

Incidentally, as Frank P. Walsh pointed out in a radio broadcast a year ago, recurring waves of bigotry have from time to time swept sections of the country, and have sometimes brought about the enactment of laws interfering with education and in the free exercise of religion. But these have Invariably been State laws.