Hammer v. Dagenhart was a 5–4 Supreme Court decision issued on June 3, 1918, that struck down the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act, the first federal law aimed at child labor. The Court held that Congress could not use its power over interstate commerce to reach the conditions under which goods were manufactured inside a state. The ruling kept federal child labor regulation off the books for more than two decades. It was overruled in 1941.
The Law the Court Struck Down
Congress passed the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act in 1916. Rather than telling factories directly how to operate, the law used the Commerce Clause: it banned interstate shipment of goods produced with child labor.1National Archives. Keating-Owen Child Labor Act (1916)
The restrictions were specific. Goods from any factory or cannery that employed children under 14 could not be shipped across state lines. Mines and quarries faced a higher floor of 16. For children aged 14 to 16 working in factories, the law capped shifts at eight hours a day, six days a week, and prohibited work between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. The Secretary of Labor’s agents could inspect covered facilities, and employers who had relied in good faith on an age certificate had a narrow defense against prosecution.2U.S. Government Publishing Office. 39 U.S. Statutes at Large 675 – An Act To Prevent Interstate Commerce in the Products of Child Labor
How the Case Reached the Supreme Court
Roland Dagenhart worked at a cotton mill in Charlotte, North Carolina, alongside his two sons. John was 13, too young under the Act; Reuben was 15, old enough to work but only under the restricted hours for the 14-to-16 group. Dagenhart sued W.C. Hammer, the United States Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, seeking to block enforcement. He argued the federal government had no authority to dictate labor conditions inside a North Carolina factory and that the law interfered with his parental rights and his sons’ wages. The federal district court agreed and enjoined enforcement, sending the government to the Supreme Court on direct appeal.3Justia. Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918)
What the Majority Held
Justice William R. Day wrote for the five-justice majority. The opinion rested on two related propositions.3Justia. Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918)
First, manufacturing is not commerce. Making goods inside a factory is a local activity, and the fact that those goods later cross state lines does not transform the production process into interstate commerce. Congress may regulate the movement of goods between states but cannot reach backward into the factory to dictate how they were made.
Second, regulating the conditions of labor within a state belongs to that state. Justice Day invoked the Tenth Amendment: powers not given to the federal government are reserved to the states, and labor regulation falls within that reserved category.
The Harmless Goods Distinction
The government pointed to cases in which the Court had already upheld federal bans on items moving in interstate commerce: lottery tickets in Champion v. Ames, contaminated food in Hipolite Egg Co. v. United States, and the transport of women for prostitution in Hoke v. United States. If Congress could keep those out of interstate commerce, why not goods made by child labor?
Justice Day drew a line. In those earlier cases, interstate transportation itself was, he wrote, “necessary to the accomplishment of harmful results.” Lottery tickets became dangerous when they crossed state lines; impure food harmed consumers in the receiving state. Goods produced by children, by contrast, were “of themselves harmless.” A shirt sewn by a 12-year-old was indistinguishable from one sewn by an adult. The statute even allowed the same goods to be shipped freely if the employer waited 30 days after removing the child from the workforce. The harm, in the majority’s view, lay in the working conditions, and those were the states’ business.4Supreme Court of the United States. Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918)
Holmes’s Dissent
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote a dissent joined by three other justices. It would outlast the majority opinion.
Holmes started from the text: the Constitution gives Congress power to regulate interstate commerce “in unqualified terms,” and the power to regulate includes the power to prohibit. If Congress could ban lottery tickets and adulterated food from crossing state lines, it could ban goods made by child labor. Whether the underlying product was itself harmful was beside the point.3Justia. Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918)
The majority’s real concern, Holmes wrote, was that the law’s purpose was to regulate factory conditions rather than commerce. He thought the Court had no business second-guessing Congress’s motives when a law fell within its enumerated powers. “I should have thought that the propriety of the exercise of a power admitted to exist in some cases was for the consideration of Congress alone,” he wrote, “and that this Court always had disavowed the right to intrude its judgment upon questions of policy or morals.”5Cornell Law Institute. Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918)
Holmes also identified the competitive problem. States that permitted child labor could undersell states that restricted it. Once a state sent its products across its borders, he argued, “they are no longer within their rights,” and that commerce “belongs not to the States, but to Congress to regulate.”3Justia. Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918)
What Congress Tried Next
Congress did not accept the decision. In the Revenue Act of 1919, it imposed a 10 percent excise tax on the net profits of any mine, quarry, or factory employing children in violation of the same age and hour limits Keating-Owen had set. The Supreme Court struck that law down too, in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co. (1922). Chief Justice Taft, writing for the majority, concluded that the tax was really a penalty designed to force compliance with labor standards Congress had no direct power to impose.6Justia. Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co., 259 U.S. 20 (1922)
Supporters then turned to a constitutional amendment. In 1924, Congress approved a proposed Child Labor Amendment that would have given the federal government authority to regulate the labor of anyone under 18. Ratification stalled. By 1937, only 28 states had ratified, well short of the three-fourths threshold then required. The amendment was never ratified, though because Congress set no deadline, it technically remains pending.7National Archives. Unratified Amendments: Regulating Child Labor
How the Ruling Was Overturned
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set federal minimum wages, maximum hours, and child labor restrictions for workers producing goods for interstate commerce. It was, in effect, a direct descendant of Keating-Owen. When a Georgia lumber manufacturer named Fred Darby was indicted under the new law, the Court had the chance to revisit its 1918 holding.
In United States v. Darby (1941), the Court unanimously upheld the Fair Labor Standards Act and expressly overruled Hammer v. Dagenhart.8Justia. United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100 (1941) Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, writing for all nine justices, rejected the old line between manufacturing and commerce. Making goods inside a factory is not itself interstate commerce, but shipping them across state lines is, and Congress can attach conditions to that shipment, including conditions about how the goods were produced.9Supreme Court of the United States. United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100 (1941)
Darby also adopted what scholars call the “substantial effects” test: Congress can regulate intrastate activities that substantially affect interstate commerce. Low wages and long hours in one state affect the competitive conditions of trade among states, giving Congress authority to set a floor. That was, in substance, the argument Holmes had made 23 years earlier.
What Happened to the Dagenhart Boys
In 1923, five years after his family’s legal victory, a reporter tracked down Reuben Dagenhart. He was 20, weighed 105 pounds, and had never made it past the third grade. He had spent the intervening years working in the same cotton mill. “I don’t see that I got any benefit,” he said. “I guess I’d have been a lot better off if they hadn’t won it.” He added: “It would have been a good thing in this state if that law they passed had been kept.”
The Dagenharts had won a case that preserved the right of two boys to keep working in a cotton mill. The older brother grew into an undersized, uneducated adult who wished someone had stopped him.