Commonwealth v. Beatty

Citations

• 15 Pa. Super. 5
• 1900 Pa. Super. LEXIS 290

Syllabus

<p>Criminal law — Sufficiency of indictment — Employee’s act of 1897.</p> <p>An indictment under the Act of April 29, 1897, P. L. 30, “ to regulate the employment and provide for the health and safety of men, women and children in manufacturing establishments,” etc., is sufficient in form when the offense charged is set out in the exact words of the act of assembly of 1860, which requires only substantial conformity with the act prohibiting the offense and prescribing the punishment.</p> <p>Constitutional law — Sufficiency of title — Employee's act o/1897.</p> <p>The title of the Act of April 29, 1897, P. L. 30, fairly invites an examination of the contents of the bill by all who employ men, women and children in industrial establishments mentioned, and everything which the nature of the subject of a title reasonably suggests as necessary or appropriate for the accomplishment of the expressed purpose is sufficiently indicated by the title.</p> <p>Constitutional law — Act of 1897 — Police power — Regulation of hours of labor.</p> <p>The employer’s act of 1897, sees. 1 and 14, is not in violation of article- 1, section 1, as unjustly interfering with an adult female’s right of acquiring and possessing property, nor of article 3, section 7, in that it is a special law regulating labor.</p> <p>The act is a proper exercise of the inherent police power of government, vested in the legislation, to make such laws as they shall judge to be for the good of the commonwealth.</p> <p>The length of time a laborer shall be subjected to the exhaustive exertion of physical labor is as clearly within legislative control as is the governmental inspection of boilers, etc., to avoid accidents, or of the sanitary conditions of factories and the like to preserve the health of laborers.</p> <p>In the exercise of its police power the state may enact laws in the interest of public morals, and to protect the lives, health and safety of persons following specified callings, and may thus indire