Commonwealth v. Wormser
| Decision Date | 07 January 1918 |
| Docket Number | 161 |
| Parties | Commonwealth v. Wormser, Appellant |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Argued October 16, 1917
Appeal, No. 161, Oct. T., 1917, by defendant, from judgment of Superior Court, April T., 1917, No. 96, affirming judgment of Q.S. Allegheny Co., No. 816, Commonwealth Docket for year 1916, sustaining summary conviction before a magistrate in case of Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Joseph Wormser. Affirmed.
Appeal from Superior Court.
The facts appear in 67 Pa.Super. 444, and from the following opinion by the Superior Court:
This proceeding was instituted against the appellant before a magistrate in the City of Pittsburgh, for the violation of Section 4 of the Act of May 13, 1915, P.L. 286, regulating the employment of minors. The defendant was convicted on his own admissions that he had employed a boy under sixteen years of age at the glass factory of which he was manager, before six o'clock in the morning and after eight o'clock in the evening and that he employed the said minor in his establishment without having procured an employment certificate. He contends on this appeal that he has a right to employ such minor without an employment certificate and in the night time because the act of assembly is unconstitutional. Appeal is made to the bill of rights of this State and to the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States affirming the freedom of all men and the exemption from liability of any person without due process of law. The act, it is said, deprives the employer and the minor equally of the freedom to contract and to obtain work and is therefore, forbidden by the Constitution of this State and of the United States. The statute in question was enacted under the general police power of the Commonwealth. Its object is declared to be "to provide for the health, safety and welfare of minors," and it is too clear for discussion that this is an appropriate subject for legislative action not only in the exercise by the Commonwealth of its authority as parens patriae but also of the inalienable power to enact such laws as promote the health, morals and general welfare of the people. In determining the validity of a statute enacted under the police power the question is, does the regulation subserve a reasonable public purpose. Regulations of the affairs of a state tending to promote such an object are within the clear power of the state and should be upheld. The Constitution of the State permits the legislature to enact all laws which are not forbidden by its letter or spirit. It is necessary, therefore, to point to some provisions of the Constitution which fairly and clearly prohibits the legislation in order to avoid its effect. A large discretion is necessarily vested in the legislature not only with respect to the welfare of the people but also with respect to the means necessary to promote it. In Crouse's Case, 4 Whar. 9, the court held that the right of parental control was a natural but not an inalienable one; that the public had a paramount interest in the virtue and knowledge of its citizens and that of strict right the business of education belongs to it. This doctrine has not been departed from as is abundantly shown in the numerous statutes affecting the status not only of children but of adults with respect to hours of labor, the character of the employment and the education of the youth of the Commonwealth.
The principle was fully discussed in Com. v. Beatty, 15 Pa.Super. 5. That case involved the constitutionality of the Act of April 29, 1897, P.L. 30, regulating the employment and providing for the health and safety of...
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