CONTENTS. I. Limitation of the Hours of Labor, A. Regulation of Labor of Women and Children, B. Regulation of Labor in Dangerous Employments, . C. Regulations of Hours of Labor in General, THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF SOCIAL WEL FARE LEGISLATION. INTRODUCTION. A Justice of the Federal Supreme Court has lately said that our democracy has deepened recently and that the highest courts are adopting the rule of "social justice" as a substitute for "technical legal justice." On March 19 and April 9 of this year the Supreme Court of the United States rendered decisions of unusual interest and far-reaching importance upon the subject of social welfare legislation.1 These decisions show that the present tendency of the court of last resort in this country is to uphold the right of the legislature to enact social welfare measures regardless of the sex of the immediate beneficiary. This is done under the police power which is the power to legislate in behalf of the public health, morals or safety by general regulations reasonably adapted to the end in view and not creating any arbitrary discrimination between different classes of men or things. The characteristics of the police power are generally stated to be (1) that it act in the form of a restriction and (2) that it pertain to the public health, morals or safety. The conception of the proper range of the police power has in recent years been much broadened, and many legislative measures having only a slight connection with the public health, morals or safety have been upheld on the ground that the police power extends to the promotion of the general welfare. The police power, in its broadest sense, may be said to include all legislation and almost every function of civil government. It is not subject to definite limitations, but is co-extensive with the necessities of the case and the safeguards of public interest. 3 1 Wilson v. New (Adamson Eight-hour law), (1897), 243 U. S. 332; Bunting . Oregon (1917), 243 U. S. 426. Nichols, The Law of Eminent Domain, 2d. ed., II., 53, 54. • Numerous cases of this kind are cited in Evans, Leading Cases on American Constitutional Law, 413. As stated by Mr. Justice Day, who spoke for the Federal Supreme Court in Sligh v. Kirkwood, 237 U. S. 52, at page 59: "It (police power) embraces regulations designed to promote public convenience or the general prosperity or welfare, as well as those specifically intended to promote the public safety or the public health. . . . In one of the latest utterances of this court upon the subject, it was said: 'Whether it is a valid exercise of the police power is a question in the case, and that power we have defined, as far as it is capable of being defined in general words, a number of times. It is not susceptible of circumstantial precision. It extends, we have said, not only to regulations which promote the public health, morals, and safety, but to those which promote the public convenience or the general prosperity.' . . . And further: 'It is the most essential of powers, at times the most insistent, and always one of the least limitable of the powers of government. The assertion by a State of its police power is frequently challenged by the claim of "liberty" as safeguarded by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. In 1916 the United States Supreme Court had occasion to consider anew the scope of the police power, and the boundaries which the Fourteenth Amendment imposes. In Rast v. Van Beman & Louis Co., 240 U. S. 342, 357, the court said: "It is the duty and function of the legislature to discern and detect evils, and by evils we do not mean some definite injury, but obstacles to a greater public welfare. . . . But it may be said that judicial opinion cannot be controlled by legislative opinion of what are fundamental rights. This is freely conceded; it is the very essence of constitutional law, but its recognition does not determine supremacy in any given instance." The actual words of the Fourteenth Amendment are these: "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." In the Constitution of Massachusetts, Part the First, Art. XII, are the words: “And no subject shall be arrested, imprisoned, despoiled, or deprived of his property, immunities, or privileges, put out of the protection of the law, exiled or deprived of his life, liberty, or estate, but by the judgment of his peers, or the |