School was invented to help children stay out of adult labor. If a child quits school, can he or she be forced to do labor due to Child Labor laws? Who came up with the Child Labor laws and when were they passed?

Dead Man Inc

Okay..that question was worded wrong. Okay here's my NEW question- Who came up with the Child Labor Laws? When was it passed? Dec 13 04, 1:43 AM

Arpeggionist

I'd think that child labor laws were developed first in the US, one of the results of the first labor unions there being that the government started to recognize the right of a worker to survive a day in his/her job. It was also possibly part of the side effects of abolishing slavory. Nothing to do with schools though. Schools were invented to give children a good enough education that they would be able to chose their own occupation as adults, and this was centuries before child labor laws came about. Dec 13 04, 3:17 AM

Stew54

The sort of child protection laws we think of in the modern world date from the mid-19th Century and evolved at around the same time in the US and in various countries of Europe. The earliest law I've found which is explicitly intended to protect children in certain circumstances is this, taken from the Code of Hammurabi (c 1760 BCE): "If a state slave or the slave of a freed man marry the daughter of a free man, and children are born, the master of the slave shall have no right to enslave the children of the free." Dec 13 04, 6:12 AM