4a. NOTES ON BACK OF 4

(1) The mother works by day with the help of the children who are too young to go to
school. The school children work after three and in the evening, when Theresa also
helps. On the evening of the visit the family sat down to work immediately after
supper The three-year old girl worked as steadily as any of the others. Theresa
said, "My mother works all the time-all day, Sundays and holidays, except when she
is cooking or washing. She never has time to go out or she would get behind in

her. work.

(2) Employed near by, pumping water, $1.25 a day. Sometimes makes $1.50 to $1.60, but
wages are going down and it's hard for an old man to find any work.

(3) This boy is on probation and has to report everv Thursday, Got into bad company
and was induced to sign a false name to a receipt for a package, which he turned
over to another fellow to sell. The family do not know how much he earns. He gives
$3 to $4 a week to his mother. Theresa gives all her earnings. "But you know how
it is with a boy," she explained. "He wants things for himself.'

(4) He is considered a bright pupil in school, and hopes to stay until he graduates.
(5) Also Annie aged 4, and Lizzie aged 3. The family complain that Annie is lazy and
wants to play so that she makes less than Lizzie.

(6) Within this period the family went back to Italy for a year,

(7) An unele leases the whole house and they rent their apartment from him. The house is a three-story frame building with tall brick buildings on either side.

235

APPENDIX B

OPINION OF THE SUPREME COURT
OF NEW YORK ON THE FIFTY-
FOUR HOUR LAW

SUPREME COURT-SPECIAL TERM, KINGS
COUNTY. JANUARY, 1913.

THE PEOPLE of the State of New YORK ex rel. WILLIAM
Hoelderlin, relator, v. THOMAS KANE, as Warden of
the City Prison of the Borough of Brooklyn, City of New
York, respondent.

The provision of section 77 of the Labor Law, as amended in 1912, limiting the hours of labor of minors and women in factories other than canning establishments to nine hours a day and fifty-four hours a week is not invalid, either as to minors or to women over the age of twentyone years, because interfering with the constitutional guaranty of liberty. Minors of both sexes are wards of the State and a distinction may legitimately be drawn under the police power as to permissible hours of labor between adult women and adult men.

The exemption from the general operation of this statutory provision of contracts for labor in canning factories from the 15th day of June to the 15th day of October does not deny the equal protection of the law.

Alfred J. Talley (Denis R. O'Brien of counsel) for relator; James C. Cropsey, district attorney (Hersey Egginton, assistant district attorney, of counsel), for respondent.

BLACKMAR, J.-This is a proceeding on habeas corpus said to be brought to test the constitutionality of the law limiting

the hours of labor of minors and women in factories other than canning establishments to nine hours a day and fifty-four hours a week. The respondent returns that he holds the relator under three commitments for the violation of section 77 of the Labor Law; one for employing a male minor under the age of 18 years more than fifty-four hours a week; another for employing a female minor under the age of 21 years more than fifty-four hours a week, and another for employing a female over the age of 21 years more than fifty-four hours a week. The return was traversed, alleging the unconstitutionality of section 77 of the Labor Law, as amended in 1912, and the district attorney, appearing for the defendant, demurred to the traverse.

The case might be summarily disposed of on the ground that, whatever may be said regarding the validity of the law limiting the hours of labor of adult women, it was competent beyond question for the Legislature to prescribe such limitations in the case of minors, who are wards of the State, and that such provisions of the law are plainly severable. I shall not, however, place my decision on that ground, but shall consider the very question argued orally and in briefs, viz.: Whether it is constitutional for the Legislature to make it a crime to employ an adult female to work in a candy factory more than fifty-four hours in a week.

It is claimed, first, that the constitutional guarantee of "liberty" is violated in that the law in question abridges the right of both employer and employee to contract for labor, and, second, that the exemption of contracts for labor in canning factories during the summer season violates the principle that laws must be uniform in their application and the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution forbidding any State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.

I propose to rest this case on the authority of reported decisions of the courts, with a few prefatory remarks as to their relative value.

Prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution each State decided for itself the question of the limitation of the police power. It was a ques

tion of the domestic policy of the several States and the decisions of their tribunals upon it were final. Since the adoption of the amendment the liberty of the individual is protected by the United States Constitution against action by the States. All judicial questions of the power of the several States to restrain liberty by the exercise of the police power are thus finally brought to the arbitrament of the United States Supreme Court. On this class of questions that is the court of last resort and its decisions are the supreme authority. Since the enactment of that amendment the courts of all the States, with reference to the rights therein secured to individuals, have become courts of co-ordinate jurisdiction. Whether the decision comes from Maine or Oregon, from Minnesota or Louisiana, if it sustains a statute of the State limiting liberty in the exercise of the police power, it is subject to review by the Supreme Court. The courts of all the States are working together with equal powers in this field of law. The decisions of the United States Supreme Court upon the police power are therefore controlling, and those of the courts of sister States may no longer be regarded as decisions of foreign tribunals; but they are entitled to that degree of deference which is yielded to courts of equal authority administering not similar laws, but the same law.

Bearing this principle in mind I proceed to an examination of the authorities. Muller v. Oregon (208 U. S., 412) decided that an act of the Legislature of Oregon prohibiting the employment of females in any mechanical establishment or factory or laundry more than ten hours during any day is not unconstitutional so far as respects laundries. The case differs from the one at bar, for in this case the employment was not in a laundry, but in a candy factory, and the legal limit is not ten hours a day, but nine hours a day and fifty-four hours a week. That case, however, decides the fundamental proposition that for the purpose of the application of a law under the police power the Legislature may establish a class composed of women alone, and may limit the hours of labor of the individuals composing that class.

In State v. Somerville (Washington, 122 Pac. Rep., 324, decided in March, 1912) a law limiting the hours of labor of

women to eight hours a day was held constitutional as applied to paper box manufactories.

In Commonwealth v. Riley (210 Mass., 387), decided January 1, 1912, an act limiting the hours during which women may be employed in manufacturing and mechanical establishments to fifty-six hours in one week and ten hours in one day was upheld.

In Ritchie & Co. v. Wayman (244 Ill., 509), decided April 21, 1910, the courts of Illinois upheld legislation forbidding the employment of females in any mechanical establishment, factory or laundry more than ten hours a day.

In Withey v. Bloem (163 Mich., 419) a law prohibiting the employment of women in factories more than ten hours a day and fifty-four hours a week was held not violative of the United States Constitution.

For other cases in which like legislation has been held to be constitutional see Wenham v. State of Nebraska (65 Nebraska, 394), Commonwealth v. Beatty (15 Pa. Sup. Ct. Rep., 5), Commonwealth v. Hamilton Mfg. Co. (120 Mass., 383).

I find practically nothing against all this weight of authority. Ritchie v. People (155 Illinois, 98) has been distinguished to the point of being overruled by the later case of Ritchie & Co. v. Wayman (244 Illinois, 509). Matter of Maguire (57 California, 604) was a case of the employment of a woman in a bar-room, and a statute prohibiting it was declared unconstitutional as violating section 18, article 20, of the California Constitution, which provided that "no person shall on account of sex be disqualified from entering upon or pursuing any lawful business, vocation or profession." This case obviously is no authority for the relator. Burcher v. People (41 Colorado, 495) was also decided upon the peculiar wording of the Constitution of Colorado.

The relator appeals to Lochner v. New York (198 U. S., 45). This is the famous bakeshop case. It holds that the State of New York cannot limit the hours of employees in bakeries to ten hours a day without infringing the liberty of the individual to contract for his labor guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The case is exceedingly interesting. It arose in the County Court of Oneida County, in this