Edward Prentiss Costigan (July 1, 1874 – January 17, 1939) was a Democratic Party politician who represented Colorado in the United States Senate from 1931 to 1937.

Edward Prentiss Costigan was born near Beulahville in King William County, Virginia, on July 1, 1874.

[1][2] After five years in Ouray, his father was appointed judge of the newly-formed San Miguel County, Colorado, by Governor James Benton Grant.

President Woodrow Wilson appointed Costigan as a member of the United States Tariff Commission in 1917, a position he held until March 1928, when he began practicing law again.

It reformed the sugar industry, prohibited the hiring of workers under 14, and set a maximum eight-hour work day for those 14 to 16.

[3] Mabel, a member of the National Child Labor Committee advisory council, was particularly concerned about the practice of employing children to work in sugar beet fields.

[2] Costigan and New York Democratic Senator Robert F. Wagner sponsored a federal anti-lynching law in 1934.

Roosevelt was concerned about a provision of the bill that called for the punishment of sheriffs who failed to protect their prisoners from lynch mobs.

The Costigan–Wagner Bill received support from many members of Congress but the emerging Southern Caucus managed to defeat it in the Senate.

She campaigned for child labor law, particularly interested in prohibiting the practice of using children in sugar beet fields.