Pennsylvania Statutes Title 43 P.S. Labor § 491-1. Legislative purpose

This State has long recognized that employment of men, women and children under conditions detrimental to health and general welfare results in injury, not only to the workers immediately affected, but also to the public interest as a whole. This recognition has produced a broad program of regulatory legislation to conserve the public welfare. The continuance of an unregulated industrial homework system in this State runs counter to that program since it is usually accompanied by excessively low wages, long and irregular hours, and unsanitary or otherwise inadequate working quarters. In enacting this act, the Legislature stated that industrial homework was harmful to society as a whole, to the industrial homework work force, and to workers in factory industries forced to compete against the lower wages and less salutary working conditions characteristic of industrial homework. The Legislature concluded that “industrial homework must eventually be abolished.” It is the aim of this act to achieve that goal, and eliminate the pernicious influence of industrial homework on the people of this State, by abolishing industrial homework except when it is engaged in by certain types of individuals unable to leave their homes to work, as hereinafter specified.