It had been regarded as settled that the transportation of commercial commodities across state lines was interstate commerce.[1] It cannot be that the transportation across state lines of cotton goods even though manufactured by children is not interstate commerce.
The majority of the court nevertheless held that
"The act in its effect does not regulate transportation among the States. ..."
It is said that
"... the power (over interstate commerce) is one to control the means by which commerce is carried on, which is directly the contrary of the assumed right to forbid commerce from moving and thus destroying it as to particular commodities."
To reach this conclusion it was necessary either to overrule or distinguish the many cases in which the court had held that similar prohibitions of the interstate movement of particular commodities are regulations of interstate commerce. The court referred to the Lottery Case, Champion v. Ames,[2] the Pure Food Case, Hipolite Egg Co. v. United States, [3] two White Slave cases, Hoke v. United States[4] and Caminetti v. United States,[5] and the Webb-Kenyon Liquor Law Case, Clark Distilling Co. v. West. Md. Ry. Co.[6]
The statutes in each of these cases are indistinguishable in terms from that in the Child Labor Case so far as the absolute prohibition
of the movement of particular commodities in interstate commerce is concerned.[7]
- ↑ Welton v. Missouri, 91 U. S. 275, 280 (1875); Railroad Co. v. Husen, 95 U. S. 465 (1877); Schollenberger v. Pennsylvania, 171 U. S. 1 (1898); Southern Ry. Co. v. Reid, 222 U. S. 424, 434 (1912).
- ↑ 188 U. S. 321 (1903).
- ↑ 220 U. S. 45 (1911).
- ↑ 227 U. S. 308 (1913).
- ↑ 242 U. S. 470 (1917).
- ↑ 242 U. S. 311 (1917).
- ↑ Absolute prohibitions of the interstate conunerce movement of particular commodities are contained in the following statutes:
Act of May 29, 1884, c. 60, 23 Stat. 31 (cattle); Act of February 8, 1897, c. 172, 29 Stat. 512 (obscene literature); Act of May 25, 1900, c. 553, 31 Stat. 188, § 3 (birds killed contrary to state law); Rupert v. United States, 181 Fed. 87 (1910); Act of March 3, 1905, c. 1496, 33 Stat. 1264, §§ 2, 4 (cattle); extended in Act of March 4, 1913, c. 145, 37 Stat. 828, 831; United States v. Nixon, 235 U. S. 231 (1914); Act of June 30, 1906, c. 3913, 34 Stat. 669, 674, etc. (meat); United States v. Lewis, 235 U. S. 282 (1914); Act of April 26, 1910, c. 191, 36 Stat. 331 (insecticides); Act of
