Does Congress have the power under the Commerce Clause to prohibit the interstate shipment of goods produced in factories that employ children under specified ages or for specified hours, when the goods themselves are harmless?

Congress enacted the Act of September 1, 1916, which prohibited the shipment in interstate or foreign commerce of goods produced in mines, quarries, mills, canneries, workshops, factories, or manufacturing establishments that, within thirty days before removal of the goods, employed children under fourteen, or employed children between fourteen and sixteen for more than eight hours a day, more than six days a week, or between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. (mines and quarries were covered for children under sixteen). A father, on his own behalf and as next friend of his two minor sons, one under fourteen and the other between fourteen and sixteen, sued. Both sons worked in a cotton mill in Charlotte, North Carolina. The father sought to enjoin enforcement of the Act. North Carolina law already barred employment of children under twelve. The goods at issue were ordinary manufactured goods, harmless in themselves, that the Act permitted to be shipped freely thirty days after they left a factory that complied with the labor standards.

The father filed a bill in the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina to enjoin enforcement of the Act. The District Court held the Act unconstitutional and entered a decree enjoining its enforcement. The United States Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina appealed to the United States Supreme Court.

(Day, J.)

No. Congress lacks the power under the Commerce Clause to prohibit the interstate shipment of harmless goods in order to regulate child labor in local production. The Act exceeds Congress's constitutional authority and is invalid.

The commerce power is a power to regulate, meaning to prescribe the rules by which commerce is governed. Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1. It does not include the power to forbid commerce in ordinary commodities. The earlier cases upholding prohibitions on interstate transport (lotteries in Champion v. Ames, 188 U.S. 321; impure food in Hipolite Egg Co. v. United States, 220 U.S. 45; the White Slave Traffic Act in Hoke v. United States, 227 U.S. 308 and Caminetti v. United States, 242 U.S. 470; liquor in Clark Distilling Co. v. Western Maryland Ry. Co., 242 U.S. 311) each involved subjects where interstate transportation itself was necessary to accomplish the harm. Here the goods are harmless, and the harm, if any, is complete before transportation begins.

Manufacturing and mining are not commerce. Production of goods intended for interstate shipment remains a matter of local regulation, and commerce begins only on delivery to a carrier. Delaware, Lackawanna & Western R.R. Co. v. Yurkonis, 238 U.S. 439; Coe v. Errol, 116 U.S. 517; Kidd v. Pearson, 128 U.S. 1. If the shipment of goods intended for interstate commerce brought their production under federal control, federal power would exclude state authority over manufacturing.

The Act's effect is to standardize the ages and hours of child employment within the States, a purely local matter reserved to the States by the Tenth Amendment. Congress cannot use the commerce power to equalize economic conditions among States or to prevent unfair competition caused by differing state labor laws. The Court does not question Congress's motives, but constitutional ends must be pursued by constitutional means. Upholding the Act would allow Congress to eliminate state control over local matters and destroy the federal system. The District Court's decree is affirmed.

Dissent (Holmes, J., joined by McKenna, Brandeis, and Clarke, JJ.) The statute, in its immediate operation, is a prohibition on interstate shipment of goods and lies within Congress's express power to regulate commerce. The power to regulate includes the power to prohibit, as the Lottery Case and its progeny establish. Congress's power cannot be cut down because the statute may indirectly affect matters the States control. Congress may not directly intermeddle with state production methods, but an act within enumerated powers is not rendered unconstitutional by its indirect effects. McCray v. United States, 195 U.S. 27 (oleomargarine tax); Veazie Bank v. Fenno, 8 Wall. 533 (tax on state bank notes); Flint v. Stone Tracy Co., 220 U.S. 107; and the Sherman Act and Pure Food and Drug Act cases all sustained federal measures despite their effects on matters otherwise left to state regulation. It does not matter whether the evil precedes or follows the transportation; it suffices that Congress believes transportation encourages the evil. The majority answered that the Lottery Case line involved subjects where interstate transportation was necessary to the harm, and that here the harm is complete before shipment begins. If prohibition is permissible against strong drink, it is permissible against the product of ruined lives, and the propriety of exercising an admitted power is for Congress, not the Court. Interstate commerce belongs to Congress, not the States, and the States remain free to regulate internal affairs but must accept national public policy when sending goods across state lines.