Hammer v. Dagenhart 1918
| Author | Daniel Brannen, Richard Hanes, Elizabeth Shaw |
| Pages | 1017-1023 |
Page 1017
Appellant: W.C. Hammer, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina
Appellee: Roland Dagenhart
Appellant's Claim: That Congress had constitutional authority under the Commerce Clause to pass and enforce the Keating-Owen child labor law.
Chief Lawyers for Appellant: John W. Davis, U.S. Solicitor General; Roscoe Pound, Dean of Harvard Law School
Chief Lawyer for Appellee: Junius Parker
Justices for the Court: William Rufus Day, Joseph McKenna, Mahlon Pitney, Willis Van Devanter, Edward Douglas White
Justices Dissenting: Louis D. Brandeis, John Hessin Clarke, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Clark McReynolds
Date of Decision: June 3, 1918
Decision: Ruled in favor of Dagenhart by finding that Congress had no authority under the Commerce Clause to restrict manufacturing activities involving children.
Significance: The decision was a strong statement in favor of state powers. The Court continued taking unpopular positions on attempts by the federal government to regulate business and protect workers' rights. Though another child labor law was overturned again four years later, by the late 1930s protection of children in the workplace finally became accepted by the courts.
Page 1018
With expansion of industrialization in the late nineteenth century, conditions for workers on the job were often harsh. The Supreme Court justices during this time largely believed in the idea of laisse-faire economy, meaning business and industry were free to grow largely unaffected by government regulation. This position led to many unpopular Court decisions blocking government regulation and efforts to promote workers' rights.
In the absence of child labor laws, many children worked long hours at difficult and dangerous jobs in mines and factories and on farms. In 1900, one out of every six children between the ages of ten and fifteen worked for money. Often jobs required children to work ten or more hours a day and paid only a few cents an hour. Chief among these was the South's growing textile industry which heavily relied on the cheap labor of children.
Social reform movements began to grow in reaction to the harsh working conditions, with particular concern focused on the effects on women and children as well as the long range implications for U.S. society. Though a proposed child labor law was unsuccessful in Congress in 1907, it drew increased national attention to the issue. However, reformists faced two major obstacles. One was that labor contracts were considered personal matters outside the authority of government to regulate. For the government to say that children should not work more than ten hours a day, or that children under fourteen years of age should not work at all would be considered interference with a parent's and employer's right to enter...
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