As you can read in this article, you'll find that child labor throughout most of the Thirties had not been eradicated fully and was very much alive in some of the more brutal parts of the nation. That said, you might be surprised to know that the proposed amendment to the constitution concerning the ban on child labor (18 and bellow) has never been ratified by the Congress even to this day. When this column was written the proposed amendment was already nine years old and the politician who penned it held that the legislation was similar Prohibition in that it attempted to impose a moral code upon the American people. He believed that this was matter best left to the states; he further pointed out that the recently passed National Recovery Act had abolished child labor by fiat (and when the NRA was invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1935, child labor abuses increased a small degree).
Child labor was finally brought under control with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.
More about Child labor during the Great Depression can be read here.
A column that recalls the failed efforts to banish child labor by adding a prohibitive amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The effort had the backing of the the American Federation of Labor and the National Child Labor Committee and was opposed by forces on Capitol Hill who felt that the issue was best addressed by each individual state. The opposition was composed of the American Bar Association, The Farm Bureau Federation, the Daughters of the American Revolution and Cardinal William Henry O'Connell of the Boston Archdiocese. "Throughout the land, child labor is making a comeback as already inadequate laws buckle under pressure of fraudulent appeals to patriotism. Here is what greed and indifference are doing to America's greatest asset: its children:"
"[The Devious] prefer children - the child worker is cheaper, more agile and willing, has less bargaining power. So the cry goes out for more and more children, 'to help win the war!'"
"Just how it helps win the war for an Alabama girl of 11 to work in the fields till she collapses and is taken to a hospital with heart trouble has not been made clear." | 
