Appellant
W. C. Hammer, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina
Appellee
Roland Dagenhart
Appellant's Claim
That Roland Dagenhart, by allowing his two teenaged sons to work in a North Carolina cotton mill, was in violation of the Keating-Owen Act, which limitedchild labor.
Chief Lawyers for Appellant
John William Davis, U.S. Solicitor General; Roscoe Pound, Dean of Harvard LawSchool
Chief Lawyer for Appellee
Junius Parker
Justices for the Court
William Rufus Day (writing for the Court), Joseph McKenna, Mahlon Pitney, Willis Van Devanter, Edward Douglass White
Justices Dissenting
Louis D. Brandeis, John Hessin Clarke, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Clark McReynolds
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
3 June 1918
Decision
That Congress did not have the right to exclude from interstate commerce allgoods manufactured by child labor, as the Keating-Owen Act had tried to do.
Significance
The case established the Supreme Court of the 1920s as highly conservative and a powerful opponent to those in Congress, and in state legislatures, who were trying to enact social-welfare legislature limiting the work day, insuringhealth and safety in the workplace, and abolishing child labor.
By the time the Supreme Court decided Hammer v. Dagenhart in 1918, many generations of U.S. children had worked long hours at difficult and dangerous jobs--on farms, in mines, in factories. At the turn of the century, one-sixth of all children between the ages of 10 and 15 years was working for money, often at jobs that paid a few cents an hour for work that lasted ten or even 12 hours a day. Children were particularly in demand as workers in the South's growing textile industry, which relied on cheap labor.
Slowly but surely, a child-labor reform movement began to gain ground. In 1907, Senator Albert Beveridge tried to get the Senate to pass anti-child laborlegislation. Although he did not succeed, he did draw national attention to the issue.
Opponents of child labor faced two difficult obstacles. The first was the widespread belief that labor contracts were individual matters that ought not beinterfered with by the government. For the government to say that children should not work more than 10 hours, or that children under the age of 14 should not work at all, was considered an infringement of a parent's and an employer's liberty to enter into a contract.
To complicate matters further, labor legislation was believed to be the province of state government, not federal. Since using child labor was cheaper than hiring adult workers, many people argued that their state could not affordto pass anti-child-labor legislation. Otherwise, they claimed, states that could use child labor could sell their goods more cheaply, putting those that could not at a disadvantage.
The Keating-Owen Act
The people who wanted to pass child labor laws thought they saw a way aroundthis problem. They wanted to pass federal legislation outlawing child labor so that no state would be at a particular disadvantage, since it would not face competition from any other state.
The problem was that, under the Tenth Amendment, states are supposed to haveall power that the Constitution does not specifically give to the federal government. Making a national law to regulate labor conditions would seem to bein violation of the Tenth Amendment.
Representative Edward Keating and Senator Robert L. Owen thought they saw a way around this problem. Their Keating-Owen Act attacked child labor on a federal level through a kind of back door. Rather than dealing directly with contracts or working conditions, the Keating-Owen Act dealt with interstate commerce, which everyone agreed was the province of the federal government. The Keating-Owen Act prohibited the shipment of any products that both were shippedfrom state to state and were made in factories or mines that employed children under age 14, or that allowed children between ages 14 and 16 to work morethan eight hours a day. This also included employers that required childrento work six days a week, after 7 p.m., or before 6 a.m. The act also said that no products could be shipped from an establishment where those labor conditions had occurred within 30 days prior to the goods being shipped.
The Act Is Challenged
No sooner was the Keating-Owen Act passed than David Clark started to organize against it. Clark was the publisher of a trade journal in Charlotte, NorthCarolina, a major textile center. He was also a member of the Executive Committee of Southern Cotton Manufacturers.
Clark knew he needed a test case. He went out and found Roland Dagenhart, whoworked with his two teenaged sons at the Fidelity Manufacturing Company, a small cotton mill in Charlotte. Dagenhart's older son, Reuben, was 15, and ifthe Keating-Owen Act were enforced, he would have to work far fewer hours perweek. Dagenhart's younger son was only 13, so he would not be allowed to work at all. When Fidelity Manufacturing said it would observe the new law, Clark provided the lawyers to sue both the company and W. C. Hammer, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, who would presumably be theone to enforce the law. Clark sought an injunction--a court ruling that would prevent the company from obeying the act and that would keep the federal government from enforcing it.
To Regulate or To Destroy?
The government made its case by showing how destructive child labor was, bothto children and to their families. Moreover, the government attorney said that if the federal government did not abolish child labor, any state that tried to abolish it would suffer, because of the unfair competition from child-labor states. In order to protect the public good, therefore, the Keating-OwenAct was necessary.
A majority of the Court did not agree. In the majority opinion, written by Justice Day, the Court held that the power to regulate commerce is the power "to control the means by which commerce is carried on," not the "right to forbid commerce from moving."
It was true that the federal government had prevented some types of interstate commerce. For example, lottery tickets, impure food, and people who had been kidnapped, could not be transported across state lines. But in these cases,Day argued, "the use of interstate transportation was necessary to the accomplishment of harmful results." In the case of the child labor dealt with in the Keating-Owen Act, "the goods shipped are of themselves harmless."
Day admitted that states who did not allow child labor would be at a disadvantage relative to those who did. However, "this fact does not give Congress the power to deny transportation in interstate commerce." Under the Tenth Amendment, states had to be free to make their own decisions.
Objections from "The Great Dissenter"
Justice Holmes was known as "the great dissenter" because he so often disagreed with the majority opinion of the Court. A liberal at a time when the Courtwas quite conservative, he often wrote the minority opinion, as he did in this case. "It does not matter whether the supposed evil precedes or follows the transportation," Holmes wrote. "It is enough that in the opinion of Congress that transportation encourages the evil."
Despite Holmes's eloquent objections, the vote was 5-4 in favor of Dagenhart,and America's first child-labor legislation was overturned. The public was outraged. The New York Evening Mail, for example, called it a "victoryof sordidness over our little ones." Senator Owen announced plans to introduce an amended version of his bill that would include language forbidding any court to declare it unconstitutional.
More realistically, members of Congress opposed to child labor turned away from the federal government's power to regulate commerce and toward its power to tax. On 24 February 1919, Congress passed a revenue act that levied a stifftax against products made by child labor. But that law was struck down by the courts in the Child Labor Tax Case of 1922.
A Young Worker's Response
Finally, in 1941, the Supreme Court overturned Hammer v. Dagenhart ina case called United States v. Darby. Meanwhile, in 1923, Reuben Dagenhart had been interviewed about his experience with the case. Then aged 20, Dagenhart expressed great regret that he had never had the chance to go to school:
Related Cases
Child Labor Law in the United States Today
Although children were exploited as a source of cheap labor at the beginningof the century when they worked long hours and received low wages, today federal and state laws protect children or minors under 18 years old among othersfrom such "sweat shop" conditions. In addition, these laws keep children safe from exposure to hazardous substances and conditions and children are barred from holding certain jobs even if they have parental consent.
Various state and federal regulations such as the Fair Labor Standards Act of1938 and the Child Labor Act of 1916 prohibit or restrict the employment ofchildren in various occupations, especially those with potentially dangerousconditions including ones involving toxic substances and heavy machinery. Onestate, for example, considers the operation of a log-loading machine too dangerous for minors. Furthermore, other regulations cover the employment of children in certain occupations, under certain conditions, after specific hours,and when school is in session.
Sources
West's Encyclopedia of American Law Minneapolis, Minnesota: West Publishing, 1998.
Child Labor Act
In part of the federal government's efforts to restrict and eliminate workerexploitation--especially the exploitation of children--in the early part of the twentieth century, Congress passed the Keating-Owen Act of 1916, commonlycalled the Child Labor Act. This act sought to stop children from working long hours for low wages in hazardous conditions by outlawing interstate commerce of goods manufactured by children. The Child Labor Act's legal foundation stemmed from the Constitution's Commerce Clause, which empowered Congress to regulate interstate commerce.
In Hammer v. Dagenhart the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Child Labor Act, arguing that harmless manufactured goods were not part of the commerce regulated by the federal government and that Congress had overstepped itsboundary. The Court felt that regulating commerce was up to states and that the Child Labor Act undermined the system of government set forth in the Constitution.
Sources
West's Encyclopedia of American Law Minneapolis, Minnesota: West Publishing, 1998.
W. C. Hammer, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina
Appellee
Roland Dagenhart
Appellant's Claim
That Roland Dagenhart, by allowing his two teenaged sons to work in a North Carolina cotton mill, was in violation of the Keating-Owen Act, which limitedchild labor.
Chief Lawyers for Appellant
John William Davis, U.S. Solicitor General; Roscoe Pound, Dean of Harvard LawSchool
Chief Lawyer for Appellee
Junius Parker
Justices for the Court
William Rufus Day (writing for the Court), Joseph McKenna, Mahlon Pitney, Willis Van Devanter, Edward Douglass White
Justices Dissenting
Louis D. Brandeis, John Hessin Clarke, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Clark McReynolds
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
3 June 1918
Decision
That Congress did not have the right to exclude from interstate commerce allgoods manufactured by child labor, as the Keating-Owen Act had tried to do.
Significance
The case established the Supreme Court of the 1920s as highly conservative and a powerful opponent to those in Congress, and in state legislatures, who were trying to enact social-welfare legislature limiting the work day, insuringhealth and safety in the workplace, and abolishing child labor.
By the time the Supreme Court decided Hammer v. Dagenhart in 1918, many generations of U.S. children had worked long hours at difficult and dangerous jobs--on farms, in mines, in factories. At the turn of the century, one-sixth of all children between the ages of 10 and 15 years was working for money, often at jobs that paid a few cents an hour for work that lasted ten or even 12 hours a day. Children were particularly in demand as workers in the South's growing textile industry, which relied on cheap labor.
Slowly but surely, a child-labor reform movement began to gain ground. In 1907, Senator Albert Beveridge tried to get the Senate to pass anti-child laborlegislation. Although he did not succeed, he did draw national attention to the issue.
Opponents of child labor faced two difficult obstacles. The first was the widespread belief that labor contracts were individual matters that ought not beinterfered with by the government. For the government to say that children should not work more than 10 hours, or that children under the age of 14 should not work at all, was considered an infringement of a parent's and an employer's liberty to enter into a contract.
To complicate matters further, labor legislation was believed to be the province of state government, not federal. Since using child labor was cheaper than hiring adult workers, many people argued that their state could not affordto pass anti-child-labor legislation. Otherwise, they claimed, states that could use child labor could sell their goods more cheaply, putting those that could not at a disadvantage.
The Keating-Owen Act
The people who wanted to pass child labor laws thought they saw a way aroundthis problem. They wanted to pass federal legislation outlawing child labor so that no state would be at a particular disadvantage, since it would not face competition from any other state.
The problem was that, under the Tenth Amendment, states are supposed to haveall power that the Constitution does not specifically give to the federal government. Making a national law to regulate labor conditions would seem to bein violation of the Tenth Amendment.
Representative Edward Keating and Senator Robert L. Owen thought they saw a way around this problem. Their Keating-Owen Act attacked child labor on a federal level through a kind of back door. Rather than dealing directly with contracts or working conditions, the Keating-Owen Act dealt with interstate commerce, which everyone agreed was the province of the federal government. The Keating-Owen Act prohibited the shipment of any products that both were shippedfrom state to state and were made in factories or mines that employed children under age 14, or that allowed children between ages 14 and 16 to work morethan eight hours a day. This also included employers that required childrento work six days a week, after 7 p.m., or before 6 a.m. The act also said that no products could be shipped from an establishment where those labor conditions had occurred within 30 days prior to the goods being shipped.
The Act Is Challenged
No sooner was the Keating-Owen Act passed than David Clark started to organize against it. Clark was the publisher of a trade journal in Charlotte, NorthCarolina, a major textile center. He was also a member of the Executive Committee of Southern Cotton Manufacturers.
Clark knew he needed a test case. He went out and found Roland Dagenhart, whoworked with his two teenaged sons at the Fidelity Manufacturing Company, a small cotton mill in Charlotte. Dagenhart's older son, Reuben, was 15, and ifthe Keating-Owen Act were enforced, he would have to work far fewer hours perweek. Dagenhart's younger son was only 13, so he would not be allowed to work at all. When Fidelity Manufacturing said it would observe the new law, Clark provided the lawyers to sue both the company and W. C. Hammer, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, who would presumably be theone to enforce the law. Clark sought an injunction--a court ruling that would prevent the company from obeying the act and that would keep the federal government from enforcing it.
To Regulate or To Destroy?
The government made its case by showing how destructive child labor was, bothto children and to their families. Moreover, the government attorney said that if the federal government did not abolish child labor, any state that tried to abolish it would suffer, because of the unfair competition from child-labor states. In order to protect the public good, therefore, the Keating-OwenAct was necessary.
A majority of the Court did not agree. In the majority opinion, written by Justice Day, the Court held that the power to regulate commerce is the power "to control the means by which commerce is carried on," not the "right to forbid commerce from moving."
It was true that the federal government had prevented some types of interstate commerce. For example, lottery tickets, impure food, and people who had been kidnapped, could not be transported across state lines. But in these cases,Day argued, "the use of interstate transportation was necessary to the accomplishment of harmful results." In the case of the child labor dealt with in the Keating-Owen Act, "the goods shipped are of themselves harmless."
Day admitted that states who did not allow child labor would be at a disadvantage relative to those who did. However, "this fact does not give Congress the power to deny transportation in interstate commerce." Under the Tenth Amendment, states had to be free to make their own decisions.
Objections from "The Great Dissenter"
Justice Holmes was known as "the great dissenter" because he so often disagreed with the majority opinion of the Court. A liberal at a time when the Courtwas quite conservative, he often wrote the minority opinion, as he did in this case. "It does not matter whether the supposed evil precedes or follows the transportation," Holmes wrote. "It is enough that in the opinion of Congress that transportation encourages the evil."
Despite Holmes's eloquent objections, the vote was 5-4 in favor of Dagenhart,and America's first child-labor legislation was overturned. The public was outraged. The New York Evening Mail, for example, called it a "victoryof sordidness over our little ones." Senator Owen announced plans to introduce an amended version of his bill that would include language forbidding any court to declare it unconstitutional.
More realistically, members of Congress opposed to child labor turned away from the federal government's power to regulate commerce and toward its power to tax. On 24 February 1919, Congress passed a revenue act that levied a stifftax against products made by child labor. But that law was struck down by the courts in the Child Labor Tax Case of 1922.
A Young Worker's Response
Finally, in 1941, the Supreme Court overturned Hammer v. Dagenhart ina case called United States v. Darby. Meanwhile, in 1923, Reuben Dagenhart had been interviewed about his experience with the case. Then aged 20, Dagenhart expressed great regret that he had never had the chance to go to school:
I don't see that I got any benefit. I guess I'd have been a lot better off if they hadn't won it. Look at me! A hundred and five pounds, agrown man and no education. I may be mistaken, but I think the years I've put in the cotton mills have stunted my growth. They kept me from getting any schooling. I had to stop school after the third grade and now I need the education I didn't get . . . It would have been a good thing in this state if thatlaw they passed had been kept.
Related Cases
- Champion v. Ames, 188 U.S. 321 (1903).
- Hipolite Egg Co. v. United States, 220 U.S. 45 (1911).
- Hoke v. United States, 227 U.S. 308 (1913).
- United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100 (1941).
Child Labor Law in the United States Today
Although children were exploited as a source of cheap labor at the beginningof the century when they worked long hours and received low wages, today federal and state laws protect children or minors under 18 years old among othersfrom such "sweat shop" conditions. In addition, these laws keep children safe from exposure to hazardous substances and conditions and children are barred from holding certain jobs even if they have parental consent.
Various state and federal regulations such as the Fair Labor Standards Act of1938 and the Child Labor Act of 1916 prohibit or restrict the employment ofchildren in various occupations, especially those with potentially dangerousconditions including ones involving toxic substances and heavy machinery. Onestate, for example, considers the operation of a log-loading machine too dangerous for minors. Furthermore, other regulations cover the employment of children in certain occupations, under certain conditions, after specific hours,and when school is in session.
Sources
West's Encyclopedia of American Law Minneapolis, Minnesota: West Publishing, 1998.
Child Labor Act
In part of the federal government's efforts to restrict and eliminate workerexploitation--especially the exploitation of children--in the early part of the twentieth century, Congress passed the Keating-Owen Act of 1916, commonlycalled the Child Labor Act. This act sought to stop children from working long hours for low wages in hazardous conditions by outlawing interstate commerce of goods manufactured by children. The Child Labor Act's legal foundation stemmed from the Constitution's Commerce Clause, which empowered Congress to regulate interstate commerce.
In Hammer v. Dagenhart the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Child Labor Act, arguing that harmless manufactured goods were not part of the commerce regulated by the federal government and that Congress had overstepped itsboundary. The Court felt that regulating commerce was up to states and that the Child Labor Act undermined the system of government set forth in the Constitution.
Sources
West's Encyclopedia of American Law Minneapolis, Minnesota: West Publishing, 1998.
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