Good Child-Labor Legislation (1942), the Children's Bureau's two maps

A 1942 Children's Bureau sheet of the U.S. Department of Labor maps state minimum ages for employment and the ratification of the child-labor amendment as of May 1, 1942, under the headline "Good child-labor legislation promotes the health and welfare of children" (NAID 514412).

What the sheet prints

Two maps and a block of text make up this Children's Bureau sheet. One map of the United States shows each state's basic minimum age for employment. The other shows which states had ratified the child-labor amendment. Both are dated May 1, 1942.

GOOD CHILD-LABOR LEGISLATION PROMOTES THE HEALTH AND WELFARE OF CHILDREN

A basic 16-year minimum age for employment in establishments producing goods for Interstate commerce is provided by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, but only 15 [handwritten over struck-out 14] States have a basic 16-year minimum by State law

Through ratification of the child-labor amendment to the Constitution, 28 States have taken action to enable Congress to provide national minimum standards for children employed in intrastate as well as interstate industries

[...]

Ratification by 8 more States is necessary to make the amendment part of the Constitution

[stamp:] Since this map was published LOUISIANA has established a basic minimum age of 16.

U. S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR—CHILDREN'S BUREAU

[imprint:] (CB 42-607)

Who made it

The sheet is signed by the U.S. Department of Labor's Children's Bureau and carries the number CB 42-607. The archive records the audience as the domestic public and the purpose as persuading or winning support, under labor, health and the home front. The National Archives files it with the World War II posters.

How to read it

Glittering generalities is the archive's tag, and it calls the technique faint. The headline makes a general claim, that good laws promote health and welfare, and the word "good" is doing the work. Under it, the sheet gives counts, a date, a statute and a correction. On this copy, 14 is struck out and 15 written in by hand, and a stamp adds a note about Louisiana.

The sheet is plain that the federal statute's 16-year minimum reached establishments producing goods for interstate commerce, and that national standards reaching intrastate work as well waited on a constitutional amendment. A federal bureau is here telling readers that Congress's power had a limit, and that the lawful way past it ran through ratification by the states: 28 so far, by the sheet's count, and 8 more needed.

The record does not say whether the amendment advanced after May 1942, and this page does not add it. The Women's Bureau, also in the Department of Labor, issued More and More Women Work on Aircraft that year. The Roosevelt administration essay covers the period.