POLITICAL CHOICE AND THE CHILD LABOR STATUE OF 1938 - PUBLIC-INTERESTOR INTEREST GROUP LEGISLATION

Federal regulation of child labor (unlike that passed in early ninetee nth century England) did not materialize until the New Deal of the 193 0s. The present paper examines, using anectodal and empirical evidence , the motives underlying the passage of depression-based child labor l egislation embodied in the Senate vote on the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Our study, which utilizes both dichotomous and trichotomous p robit models of the vote, finds evidence that there were critical and dominant private as opposed to public interests behind the restriction s that the FLSA placed on child labor and the exemptions that it estab lished.