Global History
Children have always had jobs, especially for farming purposes. By the year of 1810 about 2,000,000 school age children worked for 50 to 70 hours a week. Many of these children came from poor families that needed money. These jobs did not pay very well. In 1938 the US Congress passed the Fair Standards Act. This changed child labor some. You had to be 16 to work and the hours couldn't interfere with your schooling. We are still trying to spread these ideas to other countries that don't enforce their child labor laws.