The Children's Bureau's 1941 poster on child labor, and the law in its small print

Child-labor standards for the nation's children is a 1941 U.S. Department of Labor, Children's Bureau poster. Two children with schoolbooks take the road marked "To School" between roads to full-time work, and the small print sets out the 16-year minimum of the Fair Labor Standards Act and its exemptions (NAID 514051).

Three roads

The poster is black and white. A girl and a boy carrying schoolbooks walk toward a school under an arch lettered "To School." Two side roads lead off, signposted to full-time work in industrialized agriculture and in industry and commerce. Under the picture is a slogan, and under the slogan is the law.

CHILD-LABOR STANDARDS FOR THE NATION'S CHILDREN

No Child Under 16 Years of Age Should Leave School for Gainful Employment

School Is Their Full-Time Job

A basic 16-year minimum age, applying to industrial work at any time and to agricultural work during periods of required school attendance, is the standard set by the child-labor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, administered by the Children's Bureau, which apply to producers of goods for shipment in interstate commerce.

Children working for their parents in agriculture or other occupations except manufacturing and mining are exempt from these provisions.

U. S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR CHILDREN'S BUREAU

"Should" and "must"

Read the headline and the small print together. The headline says no child under sixteen "should" leave school for paid work. The small print says what the law actually required, and it is narrower. The minimum applied to producers of goods shipped in interstate commerce. For farm work, it applied only while school attendance was required. Children working for their parents were exempt, except in manufacturing and mining.

So the poster states a goal broader than the statute and then, honestly, prints the statute. That is a fair way to do it. A reader learns what the agency wanted and what the law could make him do, and the two are not blurred. The archive's technique tag is glittering generalities, carried by the slogans "for the Nation's children" and "School Is Their Full-Time Job," and it calls the effect faint.

The family exemption

The exemption is worth noticing from a liberty angle. The federal rule reached employers in interstate commerce; it stopped, mostly, at the family farm and the family business. A child's work for a parent, outside manufacturing and mining, was left outside this federal rule. The poster prints the exemption in full.

The same department's Women's Bureau issued its own standards chart, Minimum Standards for Employment of Women in Industry, and later the aircraft photo poster. The labor case study covers the fights between unions and employers from 1910 to 1941.