I think you cannot write a law for every extreme situation. We just have to write the best law we can that has common sense in it.
My aim is to put back some common sense. We're not doing students any favor by telling them, 'You cannot work.'
The hour restrictions are so tight. There are many jobs where you can work after 9 p.m.
As reprehensible as child labor is, and as much as it ought to be abandoned — that's something that has to be done by state legislators, not by Members of Congress. This may sound harsh, but it was designed to be that way. It was designed to be a little bit harsh. Not because we like harshness for the sake of harshness, but because we like a clean division of power, so that everybody understands whose job it is to regulate what.
[Such laws are] a communistic effort to nationalize children, making them primarily responsible to him and the government instead of to their parents. It strikes at the home. It appears to be a definite positive plan to destroy the Republic and substitute a social democracy.
The child will become a very dominant factor in the household and might refuse perhaps to do chores before six a.m. or after seven p.m. or to perform any labor.
It is likely enough that many of these child laborers will grow into capitalists and become "too rich," like their present oppressors.
