A young doffer boy works among the machines in a Lincolnton mill, North Carolina, 1908.
The government has not had a lot of ideas for what to do about the nation's anemic job market, but there are troubling signs that one old idea is starting to reemerge: child labor. In the first part of the 20th century, there was a concerted effort to end the scourge of children working in factories and textile mills. But now there is a small but noticeable drive to weaken these protections.
Maine grabbed headlines in late May when it enacted a law rolling back restrictions on employment of minors. Children under the age of 18 can now work 24 hours a week - up from 20 - and as late as 10:15 on school nights, up from 10 pm (the bill's backers wanted to raise the cut-off to 11 pm). The law diluted protections that had been put in place in 1991, when teachers were
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