Sweating in a Virginia courtroom, James Monroe strove to get things straight about his boy, Johnson. Young Monroe had gone to work in Lynchburg, Virginia, when he was around fourteen. A decade earlier, Johnson's employment would have been within the bounds of the law. By November 1916, when he took his job, Virginia's 1914 child labor statute restricted his employment at workshops such as Standard Red Cedar Chest unless he was over sixteen. While knowledge of such divisions in the youth labor market eventually became common, young workers and their families had only begun to learn of them by the time of World War I. Denying that he had ever said Johnson was over sixteen, James Monroe revealed that the particularities of Virginia law escaped him. “Did you ever have any knowledge of the fact that if they were over fourteen and under sixteen they would have to have a certificate?” the family's attorney asked. “No, sir,” the elder Monroe replied. “I thought anybody could work if they could get a job.” Monroe's seemingly commonsense answer illuminates a critical transition in the legal culture of childhood, labor, and the law.