The Department of Labor (DOL) exists today because of a massive historical pivot in how the United States decided to manage the relationship between workers, employers, and the state; one that TON and the Constitution’s other structural anti-caste provisions were originally designed to make impossible or at least extremely difficult.
In short: We have a Department of Labor because the anti-caste, anti-monopoly logic of the Founding era was deliberately overridden, sidelined, and eventually forgotten and replaced with a 20th-century administrative superstructure that does the opposite of what TON was built to prevent.
The Titles of Nobility Clauses were not polite anti-aristocracy etiquette. They were the Constitution’s kill switch against any government that dares manufacture legal lords and serfs whether crowned, chartered, credentialed, or certified.
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84:
“Nothing need be said to illustrate the importance of the prohibition of titles of nobility. This may truly be denominated the corner-stone of republican government; for so long as they are excluded, there can never be serious danger that the government will be any other than that of the people.”
Labor was supposed to be free, voluntary, contractual; not funneled through state-created gatekeepers or bureaucratic nobles. The Department of Labor exists because that vision was deliberately overridden.
Timeline Sidebar: From Free Labor Ideal to Administrative Overwrite
- 1787–1789 Constitution ratified. TON (federal & state) bans government-granted nobility/monopolies on work. Contracts Clause protects voluntary labor agreements.
- Late 19th century Industrial hell: company towns, blacklists, 16-hour days. Courts defend “liberty of contract” (Lochner v. New York, 1905) → employer supremacy as constitutional right.
- 1913 Department of Labor created (initially small, under Taft).
- 1935 National Labor Relations Act → NLRB (union certification, collective bargaining monopoly).
- 1935 UNICOR (Federal Prison Industries) established under New Deal. Penal labor rebooted as federal enterprise; explicit 13th Amendment exception (“except as punishment for crime”) turned into government-run production cartel.
- 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act → minimum wage, overtime, child-labor ban. DOL enforcement explodes.
- 1970 OSHA added under Nixon. Safety becomes federal mandate.
- Today DOL oversees wages, safety, unions, pensions, registered apprenticeships (state-backed entry barriers), discrimination claims, and more.
The Apprenticeship Connection – Modern Guild Charters
Registered apprenticeships (DOL-administered, state-partnered) are the clearest living echo of the medieval guild system TON was built to destroy.
- Multi-year programs (4–10 years common)
- Low starting pay (often poverty wages)
- Entry frequently favors family/friend networks or union insiders
- Completion grants exclusive access to licensed trades
- Government subsidies, tax credits, and certification lock out non-participants
- State enforcement: unauthorized practice in licensed fields = fines/jail
This is not neutral workforce development. It is government-chartered monopoly access to livelihoods, state-bestowed privilege enforced by law, with exclusionary barriers that look suspiciously like guild charters.
Edmund Morgan (American Slavery, American Freedom):
“Racism became the American form of class control.”
The DOL’s apprenticeship pipeline can be read the same way: state-created status hierarchies to manage class conflict, channeling workers into approved, controlled tracks while keeping outsiders (non-apprenticed, self-taught, or independent) locked out.
The UNICOR Shadow – Slavery’s Operating System Reboot
Right in the middle of the New Deal labor expansion, Congress created UNICOR (1934), Federal Prison Industries. It uses the 13th Amendment’s explicit exception (“except as punishment for crime”) to run factories inside prisons: furniture, clothing, electronics, military gear; all produced by captive labor at pennies per hour, sold to federal agencies.
This is not a side note. It is the penal reboot of the same domination OS that racial slavery once ran:
- Government creates an inferior legal class (convicts)
- Extracts lifelong (or near-lifelong) coerced labor
- Profits flow to the state
- The 13th Amendment’s loophole becomes the legal scaffolding
The DOL oversees “fair labor standards” on the outside while UNICOR operates a parallel, constitutionally blessed labor-extraction machine on the inside. Two sides of the same coin: state power managing class and labor through hierarchy.
The TON Collision – Still Live, Still Ignored
TON forbids government from granting privileged orders or monopolies on work. The DOL does exactly that in softer form:
- Registered apprenticeships → state-backed guild entry barriers
- Union certification monopolies → government-created bargaining privilege
- Prevailing-wage rules → federally-set floors favoring certain players
- UNICOR → state-run penal labor cartel
We didn’t use TON to stop this because:
- Early on, it would have meant confronting slavery-like private coercion head-on (which TON was fully capable of doing).
- By the 1930s, the public wanted protection from corporations more than protection from government.
- Structural clauses were sidelined for rights-based deference and administrative exceptionalism.
The result: a federal department whose existence assumes government must create and enforce labor hierarchies to keep private ones in check.
That is the opposite of the Titles of Nobility vision. And the clause is still there; unrepealed, un-narrowed, waiting for someone brave enough to ask:
Why do we still need a Department of Labor when the Constitution says no government-created privileged orders in the first place?
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