Lenroot v. Interstate Bakeries Corporation

• Decision Date: 02 January 1945
• Docket Number: No. 12935.,12935.
• Parties: LENROOT, Chief of Children's Bureau, United States Department of Labor, v. INTERSTATE BAKERIES CORPORATION.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

146 F.2d 325 (1945)

LENROOT, Chief of Children's Bureau, United States Department of Labor, v. INTERSTATE BAKERIES CORPORATION.

No. 12935.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

January 2, 1945.

Bessie Margolin, Assistant Solicitor, Department of Labor, of Washington, D. C. (Douglas B. Maggs, Solicitor, of Washington, D. C., Reid Williams, Regional Attorney, of Kansas City, Mo., and Westley W. Silvian, Attorney, United States Department of Labor, of Washington, D. C., on the brief), for appellant.

James G. Kimbrell, of Kansas City, Mo. (John C. Grover, of Kansas City, Mo., on the brief), for appellee.

Before GARDNER, WOODROUGH, and JOHNSEN, Circuit Judges.

WOODROUGH, Circuit Judge.

This civil action was brought under section 17 of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, c. 676, 52 Stat. 1060, 29 U.S.C.A. § 201 et seq., by the Chief of the Children's Bureau of the United States Department of Labor, against the bakeries' corporation, to restrain defendant from violating section 15 (a) (4) of the Act. After trial, the district court denied relief and dismissed the suit in accordance with findings and conclusions and an opinion reported in 55 F.Supp. 234. The appeal is to reverse the judgment.

The statutory provisions directly relevant are sections 3(l), 12(a), 15(a) (4) and 17 of the Act.¹ They prohibit any producer, manufacturer or dealer from shipping in interstate commerce any goods produced in an establishment in or about which within thirty days prior to the removal of such goods therefrom, any oppressive child labor has been employed; declare that it shall be unlawful for any person to violate the prohibition, and confer jurisdiction upon the district court for cause shown to restrain such violations. Oppressive child labor is defined to mean a condition of employment under which any employee under the age of sixteen years is employed by an employer (other than a parent or a person standing in the place of a parent employing his own child or a child in his custody in an occupation other than manufacturing or mining) in any occupation. The Chief of the Children's Bureau is empowered to provide by regulation or by order that the employment of employees between the ages of fourteen and sixteen years in occupations other than manufacturing and mining, shall not be deemed to constitute oppressive child labor if and to the extent that the Chief of the Children's Bureau determines that such employment is confined to periods which will not interfere with their schooling and to conditions which will not interfere with their health and well-being. Oppressive child labor shall not be deemed to exist by virtue of the employment in any occupation of any person with respect to whom the employer shall have on file an unexpired certificate issued and held pursuant to regulations of the Chief of the Children's Bureau, certifying that such person is above the oppressive child labor age.

It appears that the bakeries corporation is a large concern, having its home office at Kansas City, Missouri, and operating many mechanized bakeries in some sixteen states of the Union, employing several thousand persons and transporting its bakery products in interstate commerce. The evidence clearly established, and the trial court found that the corporation employed fourteen under-age children among some 450 employees at its plant at Kansas City, Missouri, for various periods of time between the dates of June 15, 1942, and October 16, 1943. This suit was filed on April 13, 1943. Eight of the children were so employed before that date and six afterwards. The ages of the children ranged from fourteen to a few months under sixteen. The corporation had no certificate from the Bureau relating to any of the children and it had not been deceived in respect to the age of any one, but had been put on notice of their ages. Within thirty days after the employment of the children, products of the Kansas City establishment in which they were employed were shipped in interstate commerce.

On this appeal the corporation has presented no contention that it did not commit the violations of the Act at its Kansas City plant at the times stated, but it contends that no injunction should be issued in the suit because "the violations, if any, do not exist at the present time, had not existed since long before the trial of this case (which was had in January, 1944) and no future violations are impending or threatened."

There is no evidence whether violations exist at the present time, and none as to whether they existed in the period "since long before the trial." Those that were established at the times specified by the evidence in the record were discovered by agents who went into the plant at Kansas City and saw the children at work there. It was not shown that there are other feasible means of knowing the truth available to the administrative agency. The proof by the Bureau that violations were occurring in the Kansas City plant in the course of the business as it was carried on by the corporation before the suit was commenced, and that they continued to occur after the suit was filed, permitted of no reasonable expectation for the future except that they would continue unless stopped by some change in the conduct of the business and of the agents of the corporation who hired the children and kept them at work. It is doubtless true, as found by the trial court, that certain managing officers of the corporation who shape its policies "acknowledge the binding force of the law", and there are letters from them to subordinates advising as to the relevant terms of the law and directing compliance. But there was no evidence that any officers of the corporation empowered and charged with responsibility had undertaken to formulate and enforce effective measures to see to it that compliance was accomplished and the law obeyed. Even after the suit was filed and the violations continued, there were no disciplinary measures of rebuke, withholding of promotion, admonition or otherwise, directed to individuals to justify any hope or expectation that the persons who hired the children would not do it again. Corporations act only through their agents and it was evident at the trial that the mere mandate of the law and the efforts of the administrative agency had not kept and would not keep children under sixteen from being worked contrary to law in the corporation's Kansas City plant.

That is the very situation in which section 17 of the Act contemplates that the district courts shall exercise the judicial power in aid of the administrative power. The court and the Children's Bureau of the Department of Labor are the means adopted to attain the end prescribed by Congress of preventing unauthorized employment of children under the age of sixteen years in such an industry as the corporation's Kansas City bakery plant. Such employment is denounced by the Act as "oppressive child labor" and declared to be unlawful and the Bureau and the courts are the means adopted to abolish it. The Bureau can not carry the burden alone. Nor is it given powers adequate to enforce the will of Congress expressed in the Act. In this case its agents are shown to have used their efforts by instruction, explanation and persuasion, to prevail upon the corporation to put a stop to its oppressive child labor practices. Having failed in these efforts and brought the suit and proved the violations, the Bureau is at the end of its function.

The court should not administer section 17 grudgingly. Whatever personal opinion may persist that working children under sixteen years of age in mechanized industries is good for them, the declaration of Congress is unequivocally to the contrary that such employment of children is oppressive child labor and is unlawful except under regulations and certification by the Children's Bureau. Beyond all doubt determination of the public interest in the matter was for Congress, and its determination is binding on the courts. The Supreme Court points out that "a democratic society rests, for its continuance, upon...