I solved my problem, all I needed to do was move the print statement before the fork. It prints out all the commands now. I'll try the exec function, and make sure it works.

I only included the forking subroutine in the previous post. For the sake of completeness here is a condensed (runnable) version of my code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use IO::File;
use POSIX ":sys_wait_h";

open(JUNKD,">test_rsh-commands.txt");
# Phase 1: Setup phase to spawn jobs
&spawn_jobs(1,handle_child); 
for($i=1;$i<=24;$i++) # BEGIN: loop 
  {
  $proc = "sp" . "$i"; # remote node to run command on
  $cmd = "date"; # simple test command
  
  # Phase 2: Spawn the jobs
  &spawn_jobs(2,$proc,$cmd,1,2,3);
  } # END: loop
# Phase 3: Wait for the jobs to finish
&spawn_jobs(3,26);
close JUNKD;

## BEGIN: Spwan children jobs on slave nodes ##
sub spawn_jobs
  {
  my @a=@_;
  my $phase,$i,$proc,$nt,$mc,$um,$sleep,$sub;

  $phase = $a[0];
  if($phase==1) { $sub = $a[1] }
  elsif($phase==2) { ($proc,$cmd,$nt,$mc,$um) = @a[1..5] }
  elsif($phase==3) { $sleep = $a[1] }
  
  if($phase==1) # Setup phase
    {
    # set up child signal handler
    $SIG{'CHLD'} = \&$sub;
    $|++;
    %fhlist;
    %fhlist2;
    %fhlist3;
    }
  elsif($phase==2) # Spawn the jobs phase
    {       
    # Create an anonymous file handle
    print JUNKD "/usr/bin/rsh $proc $cmd\n";
    $pid = fork();
    if($pid < 0 or not defined $pid)
      {
      print LOG "$#-> Can't fork! Bad kernel!";
      close LOG;
      die "$#-> Can't fork! Bad kernel!";
      }
    elsif($pid == 0)
      {
      # child process 
#      system("/usr/bin/rsh $proc $cmd");
# I'm commmenting out the above line, since not everyone
# has 24 remote nodes to run on.
#      system("$cmd");
      exec("$cmd");
      exit(0);
      }
    else
      {
      # Parent process, toss child file handle into the hash and move 
+on with
      # our lives.
      $fhlist{"$pid"} = $nt;
      $fhlist2{"$pid"} = $mc;
      $fhlist3{"$pid"} = $um;
      }
    }
  elsif($phase==3) # Wait till the children are done phase
    {
    while(1)   
      {
      @kl = keys(%fhlist);
      if($#kl >= 0)  
        {
        # mo' to do...
        sleep($sleep);
        }
      else
        {
        last;
        }
      }
    }
  }
### END: Spwan children jobs on slave nodes ##

sub handle_child 
  {
  # This gets called when a child dies... maybe more than one
  # died at the same time, so it's best to do this in a loop
  my $temp, $mcopy, $umbr, $nbias, $nmat;
  while(($dead_kid = waitpid(-1, WNOHANG)) > 0) 
    {
    $temp = $fhlist{"$dead_kid"}; # get the file descriptor back
    $mcopy = $fhlist2{"$dead_kid"};
    $umbr = $fhlist3{"$dead_kid"};
    delete($fhlist{"$dead_kid"});
    delete($fhlist2{"$dead_kid"});
    delete($fhlist3{"$dead_kid"});
    }
  }
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I supplied a simple command (date), but in my full code I am issuing commands to run other programs on the remote node.

Thanks for everyone's input!