vnr T YYYITT Published Weekly by The Rural Publishing Co., 
* L.AAA1H. 333 w 3Qth st New Tork price 0no DoUar a Year 
NEW YORK. DECEMBER 13, 1024. 
Entered as Second-Class Matter. June 2, 1879. at the Post MA 48^5 
Office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. 
Give Us 
U 
a Referendum on the Proposed 
Child Labor” Amendment 
f t - —-—a II AT THE LAW MEANS—The Congress 
at its last session formally requested the 
people of-the several States to grant it 
power to “limit, regulate, or prohibit the 
labor of all persons under 18 years of 
t==== ^ age.” This request for more power bears 
the innocent title “Child Labor Amendment,” but 
that title is somewhat of a misnomer. This pro¬ 
posal, upon its face, grants Federal power over 
youths and maidens who long have ceased to be 
children. It grants Federal control over the labor 
of such persons, not only in the factories, but on the 
farms and in the homes as well. Amendments to 
State or Federal, in the United States of America. 
STATE LEGISLATION.—No State Legislature 
can “limit, regulate or prohibit the labor of persons 
10 or 17 years of age,” except so far as such legis-. 
lation may benefit the health, morals and good order 
of the community. If State legislation goes farther 
than that, as in the case of the recent Oregon school 
law, prohibiting parents from sending their children 
to private and parochial schools, the courts must 
declare it void. Under this proposal, however, there 
is no limit upon the Congressional power granted by 
it, except the age limit of 18 years. If the Federal 
law, which it authorizes, compelled all children to 
ering what it really involves, upon the assertion (an 
assertion which is vigorously disputed) that several 
States have inadequate child labor laws, and that 
therefore the remainder of the States, in order to 
coerce the supposed delinquents, must give up their 
own State power and autonomy to Congress? No 
such proposition, based upon such lack of logic, has 
been heretofore advocated in this country. 
COMPARISON WITH OTHER AMENDMENTS. 
— The national prohibitionists did make the 
plausible claim that the so-called “dry” States could 
enforce their prohibition laws with the aid of a new 
Congressional power, given for that purpose, by 
reduce the age limit to 14 years, to limit the grant 
of power to children in factories, and to exclude 
children on the farms were defeated in Congress by 
its proponents. 
POWERS AND PENALTIES.—By necessary im¬ 
plication, as a means of enforcement, it grants im¬ 
plied Federal power over the education of such 
persons, either as a condition to permission to labor, 
or as a natural means to prevent them from work¬ 
ing. As a penalty for non-obedience to the statute 
passed thereunder, Congress could take children 
away from parents who disobeyed the law and rear 
them in a Federal institution, under such schooling, 
secular or religious, as Congress saw fit to prescribe. 
The power here sought by Congress is unlimited 
power, beyond judicial control or restraint, such as 
has never heretofore been granted to any government, 
attend Catholic schools or Methodist schools, or to 
attend some irreligious school established by Con¬ 
gress, as a condition to their being permitted to 
labor, or as a means of preventing them from work¬ 
ing, no court in the land could hold it void, since it 
would be authorized by a new constitutional amend¬ 
ment couched in unlimited terms. At present there 
is absolutely no constitutional warrant for a Fed¬ 
eral education bill. But this proposal gives such 
warrant as a necessary means of preventing persons 
under 18 years of age from working. 
A REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE.—What are the 
people of the United States going to do about this 
matter? Were any of the Legislatures elected last 
November primarily committed to this revolutionary 
change in our entire system of government? Are 
we going to permit it to be ratified without consid- 
means of a Federal amendment. The proponents of 
the Nineteenth Amendment did coerce unwilling 
States, and they did reconstruct all the States, but 
they gave no power to Congress to withhold or grant 
suffrage. The new reconstructed States, with the 
women made part of the new sovereign people, bear 
exactly the same relation to their Federal govern¬ 
ment as before. No additional powers were granted 
to Congress by the Nineteenth Amendment, as they 
are by this so-called child labor proposal, to inter¬ 
fere and meddle with the local statutes of all the 
States and over-ride their self-government. Giving 
up their sovereign powers and the control of their 
children is a high price to ask the people of the 
several States to pay for the privilege of repenting 
for the supposed sins of a few delinquent States. 
THE PEOPLE WITHOUT VOICE.—Such a rad- 
Mt 
