Creation of Child Labor Laws
Influential laws pertaining to the abolishment of child labor began during 1903 in New York. Due to the New York Child Labor Committee and the surge of disapproval of child labor from New York citizens, bills that were submitted actually got passed. In 1903 the Lewis Bill was passed, which required children to stay in school until the age of fourteen. In the same year, “[f]our child labor bills—the revisions of the factory and mercantile laws, the Penal Code change, and the education amendment—passed…without significant opposition.”15 In 1909 the Voss Dangerous Trades Act was enacted, which “prohibited the employment of children under sixteen in more than thirty occupations specified as dangerous.”16
While the outright abolishment of child labor in New York did not happen in the time period being looked at, the most influential events towards the abolishment did happen during this period. The reality of child labor was spread throughout New York, and for the first time New Yorkers had at least a glimpse of what the lives of the children on the street looked like.
15Felt, Jeremy P. Hostages of Fortune ; Child Labor Reform in New York State. Syracuse University Press, 1965: 56-57.
16Ibid., 79.