The fundamental proposition thus established is that the power
over interstate commerce is not an absolute power of
prohibition, but only one of regulation, and that the prior
decisions in which prohibitory rules had been sustained rested
upon the character of the particular subjects there involved.
It was held that the authority over interstate commerce was to
regulate such commerce and not to give Congress the power to
control the states in the exercise of their police power over
local trade and manufacture.

[Footnote 1: Charles E. Hughes, President's Address, Printed in Year
Book of New York State Bar Association, Vol. XLII, p. 227 et seq.]

Congress did not receive this decision of the Supreme Court
submissively. On the contrary, plans were laid to nullify it. The effort
to legislate on child labor under cover of the power to regulate
commerce having failed, recourse was had to the constitutional grant of
power to lay taxes. Within six months after the decision of the Supreme
Court declaring the act unconstitutional was announced, another statute
similar in purpose and effect was enacted as part of a Federal Revenue
Act.[1] This act provided for an additional tax of ten per cent. of the
net profits received from the sale or distribution of the product of any
establishment in which children under the age of fourteen years had been
employed or permitted to work or children between the ages of fourteen
and sixteen had been employed or permitted to work more than eight hours
in any day or more than six days in any week or after the hour of 7 P.M.
or before the hour of 6 A.M. during any portion of the taxable year. In
other words, the law which had been declared void was substantially
reënacted, with the substitution of a prohibitive tax for the clause
prohibiting transportation in interstate commerce.