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By Suzanne Blake
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While many Americans might be under the impression that child labor is deemed illegal across the country, many states have never approved an amendment that would limit the practice nationwide.
New Hampshire just placed a petition in support of the Child Labor Amendment, but it has been decades since it was first proposed.
The Child Labor Amendment was proposed in 1924 and called for Congress to have the "power to limit, regulate and prohibit the labor of persons under 18 years of age."
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While 28 states voted to ratify the amendment, many have rejected it or avoided voting on the issue at all.
The states that voted against it include Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia.
Meanwhile, a handful of states have refrained from voting on the matter at all: Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nebraska, New York and Rhode Island.
Hawaii and Alaska became states around 20 years after the amendment was first sent, but all have avoided making their support for the anti-child labor law clear.
"The reasoning for failing to ratify in these states at the time centered on giving the federal government more control, even though the second section of the amendment says the power of the state would only be limited in regard to labor with those under the age of 18," Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor for the University of Tennessee at Martin, told Newsweek.
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"Recently, there's been renewed interest in seeing the amendment in the hopes it would strengthen existing child labor laws and help reverse what is being viewed by advocates in some states as a loosening of child labor practices."
Current law mandates that children under the age of 14 cannot work in most industries.
However, in recent years, some states have weakened their individual child labor laws, with Missouri looking into getting rid of restrictions on children aged 14 and 15 in the workforce. The Alabama Policy Institute also focused on ending child labor laws as a way to address the state's growing labor shortage.
Currently, the Fair Labor Standards Act provides some protections against child labor but, before that, reformers were pushing for a total end to child labor through the Child Labor Amendment.
To be ratified today, 38 states would need to approve the amendment. As of 1938, the amendment has been stuck at the 28 states who gave their approval.
"This is about money, power and control. The Child Labor Amendment, back in the 1920s, was supposed to give Congress the authority to regulate, restrict and ban child labor. The idea being that kids should be kids and not spend their days down in the coal mine," HR consultant Bryan Driscoll told Newsweek.
"But in the America of that era, big business was all too happy to squeeze cheap labor out of pint-sized workers. And too many state legislatures, flush with corporate influence and afraid of federal overreach, ran screaming in the other direction. That's why the amendment never got across the finish line."
Driscoll said today's states that haven't approved the amendment reflect a "stubborn streak" of "anti-worker, anti-regulation sentiment."
"Many of these states are where 'pro-business' often means 'workers be damned,'" Driscoll said.
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