John A. Fliter, Kansas State University has published Child Labor in America: The Epic Legal Struggle to Protect Children with the University Press of Kansas. From the publisher:
“Fliter chronicles the century-long struggle in the United States, complicated by the structural constraints of American constitutionalism, to abolish the social evil of child labor. By the mid-twentieth century, reformers had forged a national consensus and secured state and federal laws to keep children in school and out of unsafe workplaces, but that consensus is unraveling. This timely history is a wake-up call for twenty-first-century Americans.” -David S. Tanenhaus
“In this detailed and clearly written book, John A. Fliter focuses on child labor as a legal and administrative issue at both the state and federal levels. The book’s greatest contribution is its comprehensive approach, which starts in the 1840s and continues up to the present day when child labor laws have once again come under fire. This immediately becomes one of the most useful books on American child labor law.” -James Marten
Further information is available here.
Praise for the book:
Child labor law strikes most Americans as a fixture of the country’s legal landscape, involving issues settled in the distant past. But these laws, however self-evidently sensible they might seem, were the product of deeply divisive legal debates stretching over the past century—and even now are subject to constitutional challenges. Child Labor in America tells the story of that historic legal struggle. The book offers the first full account of child labor law in America—from the earliest state regulations to the most recent important Supreme Court decisions and the latest contemporary attacks on existing laws.Children had worked in America from the time the first settlers arrived on its shores, but public attitudes about working children underwent dramatic changes along with the nation’s economy and culture. A close look at the origins of oppressive child labor clarifies these changing attitudes, providing context for the hard-won legal reforms that followed. Author John A. Fliter describes early attempts to regulate working children, beginning with haphazard and flawed state-level efforts in the 1840s and continuing in limited and ineffective ways as a consensus about the evils of child labor started to build. In the Progressive Era, the issue finally became a matter of national concern, resulting in several laws, four major Supreme Court decisions, an unsuccessful Child Labor Amendment, and the landmark Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
“Fliter chronicles the century-long struggle in the United States, complicated by the structural constraints of American constitutionalism, to abolish the social evil of child labor. By the mid-twentieth century, reformers had forged a national consensus and secured state and federal laws to keep children in school and out of unsafe workplaces, but that consensus is unraveling. This timely history is a wake-up call for twenty-first-century Americans.” -David S. Tanenhaus
“In this detailed and clearly written book, John A. Fliter focuses on child labor as a legal and administrative issue at both the state and federal levels. The book’s greatest contribution is its comprehensive approach, which starts in the 1840s and continues up to the present day when child labor laws have once again come under fire. This immediately becomes one of the most useful books on American child labor law.” -James Marten
Further information is available here.
