In the public imagination our nation long ago repudiated child labor, invested in children as a future asset, and prioritized education as the vehicle for children’s advancement into the labor market. The belief is that those laws that allow employers to hire children do so in the service of training and educating children, and not to supply the labor market with more bodies. Unfortunately, media revelations over the past couple of years demonstrate that our country’s reliance on child labor — and the exploitation inherent in such a market — is not a thing of the past. This Essay explores a particular historical thread of the arguments around child labor which links today’s child labor market to yesterday’s. We argue that the reasons given to end child labor at the beginning of the 20th century — to save children from the whims of their parents and unscrupulous third parties — are still being used today in the narratives about why children are in dangerous workplaces. Both at the turn of the 20th century and today, narratives about poverty, family need, exploitation by third parties, and even cultural attitudes dominate the debate over child labor. In the past, efforts to save children from exploitative working conditions focused on progressive aspirations for American society. These efforts also focused primarily on saving white children from child labor exploitation. Today, the arguments of the mostly white progressive reform movement of the early 20^th century show up in a focus on external factors to explain why children — mostly immigrants — are in dangerous and exploitative workplaces. However, within this conversation it is important to highlight that the discussion and historic activism around child labor has focused on the presence of white children in the workforce. In order to understand the exploitative use of child labor today, we cannot ignore the role that race has played with regard to the child labor debate throughout our nation’s history. While not meant as a comprehensive history of child labor in the United States and its roots, this Essay pulls on some of the strands of arguments surrounding who is responsible for allowing child labor and the assumptions behind those arguments.