From a constitutional point of view it makes a considerable difference whether the exercise of special power over the individual is based upon his supposed dependency and inferiority of right, or is due to special conditions in no way derogatory to his civil status. It is one thing to quarantine a smallpox patient, another thing to detain an alien at an immigrant station. When measures shall be proposed for the control of women in industry upon a principle different from any applied to men, it will be time to inquire whether she is to be measured by different and inferior political standards. The laws that have been so far enacted for women involve, with rare exceptions, no such discrimination. The specific evil effects of long hours of standing upon female organs have long been recognized; so there is assumed to be a difference in nervous structure, and a greater susceptibility, in consequence of this, to the exhaustion of prolonged work. The indirect danger of diminished strength and vitality of possible offspring involves a supreme interest of the community at large, for which there is no parallel in the case of men, and which must satisfy the demands of the strictest constitutional constructionist. The prohibition of night work in factories has in the case of younger women, at least, the justification of moral protection;[64] and while, upon an assumed constitutional equality of both sexes, such total prohibition is less easily explained as regards women of mature age, it is probably possible to establish a case of social or physical desirability of the restriction in their favor. It might be said that the prohibition of women’s work on specially dangerous machinery presents a case where the tutelary care of the state is simply pushed one step farther than in the case of men; but even here a specific danger is traceable; for it appears that the first provision of that kind in England was due to the suggestions of factory inspectors who pointed out to the parliamentary committee that the customary dress of girls and women made them especially liable to be caught by machinery.[65]