woman of full age, living in
her own house, should connect her loom or spindles by electric wire to
the nearest mill or factory, and then proceed to weave or spin _more_
than the legal limit of nine hours per day. Would the state, under the
broadest principles of English constitutional liberty, have the right
to come in and tell her not to do so; particularly when the man in the
next house remained free? Up to this time there is no doubt that a
factory, a large congregation of labor, under peculiar conditions,
presents a different question and a different constitutional aspect
from that of the individual. This, indeed, is the principle which must
justify the constitutional regulation of sweat-shops, as to which we
will speak next.

The sweat-shop is the modern phrase for a house, frequently a
dwelling, tenement, or home, not a factory, and not under the
ownership or control of the person giving out the employment.

Now a factory may obviously be regulated under ordinary police
principles; but when the first great case came up as to regulating
labor in a man's own home, even though it was but one floor of a
tenement, it was decided by the highest court of New York to be
unconstitutional. The case was one concerning the manufacture of
cigars, which by the statute was prohibited in tenement houses on any
floor partly occupied for residence purposes.[1] Nevertheless it may
be questioned whether, with the advancing social feeling in such
matters, legislation would not be now sustained when clearly aimed at
sanitary purposes, even though it interfered with trades conducted in
a man's dwelling house. I hold that it is quite as possible for the
arm of the state to interfere to prevent the baking of bread in
bedrooms, for instance, as it is to seize upon clothing which has been
exposed to scarlet fever. A man's home, under modern theories, is
no more sacred against this police power than is his body against
vaccination; and the last has been decided by the Supreme Court of the
United States.[2]

[Footnote 1: In re Jacobs, 98 N.Y. 98. See the author's "Handbook to
the Labor Law of the U.S.," p. 151.]

[Footnote 2: Massachusetts _v._ Jacobson, 197 U.S. 11.]

At all events, legislation may be aimed against sweat-shops which in
any sense resemble factories--that is, where numbers of persons not
the family of the occupier are engaged in industrial labor; so
in Pennsylvania it has been extended to jurisdiction over shops
mainta