Boyer, 108 Indiana, 472; Sanger v. Hibbard, 53 S. W. Rep. 330; Vasse v. Smith, 6 Cranch, 226; Vinton v. State, 52 S. E. Rep. 79; Wright v. Snowe, 2 DeG. & Sm. 321; Williamson v. Jones, 27 S. E. Rep. 418; Whittington v. Wright, 9 Georgia, 29.

The statute in question is a penal statute to be strictly construed. Bandefield v. Bandfield, 75 N. W. Rep. 287; Field v. United States, 137 Fed. Rep. 6; Huntington v. Attrill, 146 U. S. 657; Sarlls v. United States, 152 U. S. 570, 575; The Ben R., 134 Fed. Rep. 784; United States v. Harris, 177 U. S. 305, 310; United States v. Wiltberger, 5 Wheat. 96; see also Am. Car Co. v. Armentraut, 214 Illinois, 509; Illinois Central R. R. Co. v. O'Connor, 189 Illinois, 564; Strafford v. Republic Iron Co., 238 Illinois, 371.

Mr. George E. Gorman and Mr. John M. Pollock for defendant in error.

MR. JUSTICE HUGHES delivered the opinion of the court.

The Sturges and Burn Manufacturing Company is a corporation engaged in manufacturing tinware and other metal products. It employed Arthur Beauchamp, the defendant in error, who was under sixteen years of age, as a press hand to operate a punch press used in stamping sheet metal. Beauchamp was injured in operating the press and brought an action through his next friend, in the Superior Court of Cook County, to recover the damages sustained, counting on the statute of Illinois passed in 1903 (Laws of 1903, p. 187, Hurd's Statutes, 1909, p. 1082) which, by § 11, prohibited the employment of children under the age of sixteen years in various hazardous occupations including that in which the injury occurred. The trial court, refusing to direct a verdict for the defendant, instructed the jury that if the plaintiff was in fact less than sixteen years old and when injured

Opinion of the Court.

was employed by the defendant upon a stamping machine, the defendant was guilty of a violation of the statute and the plaintiff was entitled to recover. A verdict was rendered for the plaintiff and judgment thereon was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the State. 250 Illinois, 303. The case comes here on error.

The plaintiff in error complains of the ruling that a violation of the statute gives a right of action to the employé in case of his injury, but this is a question of state law with which we are not concerned.

The Federal question presented is whether the statute as construed by the state court contravenes the Fourteenth Amendment. It cannot be doubted that the State was entitled to prohibit the employment of persons of tender years in dangerous occupations. Holden v. Hardy, 169 U. S. 366, 392, 395; Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11, 31; Muller v. Oregon, 208 U. S. 412, 421; Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R. R. Co. v. McGuire, 219 U. S. 549, 568, 569. It is urged that the plaintiff in error was not permitted to defend upon the ground that it acted in good faith relying upon the representation made by Beauchamp that he was over sixteen. It is said that, being over fourteen, he at least had attained the age at which he should have been treated as responsible for his statements. But, as it was competent for the State in securing the safety of the young to prohibit such employment altogether, it could select means appropriate to make its prohibition effective and could compel employers, at their peril, to ascertain whether those they employed were in fact under the age specified. The imposition of absolute requirements of this sort is a familiar exercise of the protective power of government. Reg. v. Prince, L. R. 2 C. C. 154; People v. Werner, 174 N. Y. 132; State v. Kinkead, 57 Connecticut, 173; Ulrich v. Commonwealth, 69 Kentucky, 400; State v. Heck, 23 Minneapolis, 549; State v. Hartfiel, 24 Wisconsin, 60; State v. Tomasi, 67

Vermont, 312; Commonwealth v. Green, 163 Massachusetts, 103; 3 Greenleaf on Evidence, § 21; 30 Am. Rep. (note) 617-620. And where, as here, such legislation has reasonable relation to a purpose which the State was entitled to effect, it is not open to constitutional objection as a deprivation of liberty or property without due process of law. Shevlin-Carpenter Co. v. Minnesota, 218 U. S. 57, 70.

It is also contended that the statute denied to the plaintiff in error the equal protection of the laws, but the classification it established was clearly within the legislative power. Heath & Milligan Co. v. Worst, 207 U. S. 338, 354; Louisville & Nashville R. R. Co. v. Melton, 218 U. S. 36, 54; Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co., 220 U. S. 61, 78; Mutual Loan Co. v. Martell, 222 U. S. 225, 236. The judgment is

EASTERN

EXTENSION,

AUSTRALASIA

Affirmed.

AND

CHINA TELEGRAPH COMPANY, LIMITED, v. UNITED STATES.

APPEAL FROM THE COURT OF CLAIMS.

No. 419. Argued October 22, 1913.-Decided December 1, 1913.

While the act of March 3, 1887, c. 359, 24 Stat. 505, broadened the general jurisdiction of the Court of Claims, it was not repugnant to, or inconsistent with, the limitations of § 1066, Rev. Stat., expressly excluding from such jurisdiction all claims growing out of treaty stipulations, and it did not, therefore, repeal that section. Claims based on treaty stipulations within § 1066, Rev. Stat., include those which arise solely as the result of cession of territory to the United States.

The policy and spirit of a statute should be considered in construing it as well as the letter.

Although the Court of Claims has not jurisdiction of claims against the United States based on treaty stipulations, it has jurisdiction of claims based on contracts originally made with the former sovereign of ceded territory and assumed by the United States after the cession either expressly or by implication.

Where the court below declined to take jurisdiction and the appeal is solely on that question, this court will not express any opinion on the merits as they are not before it.

48 Ct. Cl. 33, reversed.

THE facts, which involve the jurisdiction of the Court of Claims, are stated in the opinion.

Mr. Louis Marshall for appellant.

Mr. Assistant Attorney General Thompson, with whom Mr. William F. Norris was on the brief, for the United States.

MR. JUSTICE HUGHES delivered the opinion of the court.

This is an appeal from a judgment of the Court of Claims which dismissed, upon demurrer, the petition of the claimant for the want of jurisdiction. 48 C. Cls. 33.

The petition averred that the claimant, a British corporation, secured from the Government of Spain, in the year 1879, a concession for the construction and operation of a submarine telegraph cable between the island of Luzon and Hong Kong, with an exclusive privilege for forty years, under which it maintained a cable from Hong Kong to Bolinao; and that in 1897, the Government of Spain granted a further concession for three submarine telegraph cables to provide communication between the Islands of Luzon, Panay, Negros and Zebu, in the Philippine archipelago. Among the conditions of the lastmentioned grant, a copy of which is annexed to the petition and made a part of it, are the following:

"Article 9. The Concessionaire undertakes to work, at his own expense and risk, the Cables of this Concession for a period of twenty years, the said term to begin from the date of the taking over of the Cables and their adjuncts in perfect working order.

"Article 10. The Concessionaire shall enjoy an annual subsidy of £4,500 (four thousand five hundred pounds sterling), payable monthly in twelve instalments, during the whole term of the working of the Cables, the said payments being made at Manila by the Chief Treasury Office of those Islands.

"Article 16. The Company holding the Concession shall pay the State the ten per cent. which tax in its application to cablegrams is fixed after first deducting the amount of the expenses for the maintenance of the Stations, calculated at £6,000 (six thousand pounds sterling) per annum, the said expenses not to exceed the amount specified.

"Article 17. It shall be obligatory to transmit official despatches, which shall enjoy precedence, at half the rates charged for those of a private character.

In March, 1898, the claimant obtained an additional concession from the Government of Spain for a submarine telegraph cable between Hong Kong and Manila which was completed in the following month.

It was further alleged that the claimant had "actually fulfilled" and continued "to fulfill" all of the conditions of the concessions and "to perform all of the duties imposed upon it" by their terms. After setting forth the making of the Treaty of Paris, and the cession thereby to the United States of the Philippine Islands, the petition continued:

"Thereupon the United States of America entered into the occupancy of said Philippine Islands, and proceeded to exercise sovereignty over said Islands and of the inhabitants thereof, and to assume jurisdiction and control