III PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS JOINT SESSION WITH THE AMERICAN POLITICAL Presiding Officer: ROYAL MEEKER Commissioner, United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, WASHINGTON, D. C. AMERICAN LABOR LEGISLATION HENRY R. SEAGER President, American Association for Labor Legislation It is the high privilege of the presidents of some of the sister associations that meet with us this year to render their addresses notable by the announcement of important discoveries in their fields of research or of original and illuminating theories. I can make no similar claim to your attention this evening. In the field of labor legislation no important discoveries have been made since we last came together, nor have I original and illuminating theories to unfold. Nevertheless there have been developments during the last year that merit our thoughtful consideration. These have not been so much in the realm of acts-of legislation proposed or passed-as in the more important realm of ideas. A reactionary wave has swept over the country which has not only stiffened the opposition of the traditional enemies of labor legislation, but weakened the support of some of those who should be its stanchest friends. It is to three of the manifestations of this reactionary tendency that I wish particularly to draw your attention. On November 23rd the Supreme Court of Massachusetts decided that a nine-hour day law for employees about railroad stations was unconstitutional. At its Philadelphia convention last December, and again at its recent convention in San Francisco, the American Federation of Labor formally declared against the legal regulation of wages and of the hours of labor of adult men other than government employees. Finally, as a result of the European war, the very examples that we have cited as proving the value and need of labor and social insurance legislation are beginning to be turned against us as evidence of their evil tendencies and dangers. The Massachusetts decision1 was rendered with reference to Chapter 746 of the statutes of 1914 which provided that: 'Commonwealth v. Boston and Maine R. R., 110 N. E. 264 (1915). Employees in and about steam railroad stations in this commonwealth designated as baggagemen, laborers, crossing-tenders and the like, shall not be employed for more than nine working hours in ten hours' time; the additional hour to be allowed as a lay-off. A case was submitted to test the constitutionality of this statute, the facts being agreed to by both sides, as follows: One Richards was a general baggage man of the Boston and Maine Railroad, employed at Worcester. He was required to go on duty at 6 A. M. and remain until 8 P. M., with a lay-off of one hour from 12 to I and of half an hour from 6.38 to 7.08. His duties caused him to be out of doors about half the day, and it was not charged that he did not receive adequate assistance in handling baggage or that his occupation was unhealthful in its nature. Through Chief Justice Rugg, and without any dissenting vote, the court held (1) that the act, though ambiguous in its language, was clearly intended to limit the work of those included to nine hours a day; (2) that "Since the agreed facts show that there is nothing inherently unhealthy about the work which the employee did," the case is indistinguishable from Lochner v. New York (198 U.S. 45), and the act is therefore unconstitutional since "that decision is binding upon the legislature and courts of this commonwealth"; (3) that the act cannot be defended as an amendment to the charter of the Boston and Maine Railroad, but must be viewed as an addition to the labor law; (4) that it is unnecessary to go into the question of whether such legislation is not an interference with interstate commerce beyond the power of a state legislature, since the act is on other grounds unconstitutional. The decision thus rests entirely on the authority of the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the famous New York tenhour bakeshop law case. No attempt was made by the court to discuss either the wisdom of that decision or the merits of the statute before it. No reference was made to other decisions of the Supreme Court rendered before and since which seem inconsistent with the majority opinion in the Lochner case. It, therefore, calls for a careful review of the grounds on which the Supreme Court rested its decision in that case and of its relation to other decisions. The Lochner case was decided in 1905, seven years after the Supreme Court had upheld the constitutionality of the Utah eighthour law applying to mines and smelters (Holden v. Hardy, 169 U.S. 366, 1898). In commenting on these decisions at our first annual meeting nine years ago, I ventured the opinion that "When the Supreme Court of the United States solemnly decides that mining in Utah is such a dangerous occupation that the work day may properly be limited to eight hours, and a little later that the baking industry in New York is so innocuous that a ten-hour law involves an unwarranted invasion of private liberty, it shows merely that the justices know more about the mining industry than they do about present day city bakeshops." I am still of this opinion, but the view I also expressed that the Lochner decision would prove of no lasting importance in determining the constitutionality of labor laws is now shown to have been unwarranted. The significant facts in reference to this case have frequently been stated. The decision upholding the Utah eight-hour statute had been by a divided court. Among the dissenting justices, the most vigorous was Justice Peckham. When four of his associates concurred with his view that the New York ten-hour law was unconstitutional, he was naturally chosen to write the opinion. In doing so he used language that was strikingly at variance with the majority opinion in the Utah case. His final conclusion that "the act is not within any fair meaning of the term a health law, but is an illegal interference with the rights of individuals, both employers and employees, to make contracts regarding labor upon such terms as they may think best" was sharply criticized by Justice Harlan, Holmes, White, and Day in vigorous dissenting opinions. His supplementary statement that "statutes of the nature of that under review limiting the hours in which grown and intelligent men may labor to earn their living are merely meddlesome interferences with the rights of the individual" implied an attitude toward labor legislation that no decision which the Supreme Court has since rendered has borne out. That this decision reflected to an unusual extent the preconceptions and prejudices of a few judges is shown not only by the fact that four of the ablest Supreme Court justices of the period dissented, but by the more striking fact that of the twenty-two judges who passed on the case in its different stages, twelve voted to uphold the statute, and only ten, including the five Supreme Court justices, voted against it. Justices Holmes, White and Day are still on the bench, while Justice Peckham and three of the justices who voted with him have passed away. In their places new justices are now called upon to |