Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/90

56 56 HARVARD LAW REVIEW Mr. Justice Holmes, dissenting, said: "It does not matter whether the supposed evil precedes or follows the transportation. It is enough that in the opinion of Congress the transportation encourages the evil. . . . "The notion that prohibition is any less prohibition when applied to things now thought evil I do not understand. But if there is any matter upon which civilized countries have agreed — far more unanimously than they have with regard to intoxicants and some other matters over which this country is now emotionally aroused — it is the evil of pre- mature and excessive child labor. I should have thought that if we were to introduce our own moral conceptions where in my opinion they do not belong, this was pre-eminently a case for upholding the exercise of all its powers by the United States. " But I had thought that the propriety of the exercise of a power ad- mitted to exist in some cases was for the consideration of Congress alone, and that this Court always had disavowed the right to intrude its judg- ment upon questions of policy or morals. It is not for this Court to pro- noimce when prohibition is necessary to regulation, if it ever may be necessary — to say that it is permissible as against strong drink but not as against the product of ruined lives." « The Proposition that the Law is Invalid because its Nec- essary Effect is to Invade the Province Reserved Ex- clusively TO THE States. The second phase of the opinion assumes that the statute deals with interstate commerce, but that this was only in order to accomplish a result in the states beyond the scope of federal authority. The effect of the statute is to control the hours of labor in manufacturing, and the control over interstate commerce cannot be used to this end; for if it could, the power of the states over local matters would be eliminated and our system of government practically destroyed. The second phase is represented by the following passages: " The grant of power to Congress over the subject of interstate com- merce was to enable it to regulate such commerce, and not to give it au- thority to control the states in their exercise of the police power over local trade and manufacture. . . . " A statute must be judged by its natural and reasonable effect. Col- lins V. New Hampshire, 171 U. S. 30, 33, 34. The control by Congress over interstate commerce cannot authorize the exercise of authority not entrusted to it by the Constitution. . ..