When I was secretary of labor 30 years ago, one major goal was to crack down on companies that employed children, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. I remember being horrified to discover that even in the early 1990s, children who should have been in school were working, often in dangerous jobs.
We made progress. Child labor declined in the United States. But it was a hard slog. By law, the highest fines I could levy against companies that put children to work were relatively small. Some firms treated them as costs of business.
