Rhode Island General Laws Title 28. Labor and Labor Relations § 28-18-1. Purpose of chapter

The employment of workers in industry in the state of Rhode Island under conditions resulting in unreasonably low wages and conditions injurious to their health and general welfare is a matter of grave and vital public concern. Any conditions of employment especially fostering such working conditions are therefore destructive of purposes already accepted as sound public policy by the general assembly and should be brought into conformity with that policy. Uncontrolled continuance of homework is such a condition; here wages are notoriously lower and working conditions endanger the health of the worker; the protection of factory industries, which must operate in competition with homework and of the workers employed in homeworking and of the public interest of the community at large in their health and well being, require strict control and gradual elimination of industrial homework.