The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-04-22
i vnRr ImpoRrANr DECISION.


 has there been handed down decis- ion more intimately connected with the subject of personal liberty than is the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States on the ten-hour law, synopsis of which was printed in The Advertiser yesterday. The New York law. thus declared unconstitutional. was statute making 1t a punishable offense for an employer of labor to employ any person fof 6 longer time than ten hours day. or sixty hours week. Under that law, as stated. baker had employed a man to work over time and for this he was fined $50. That is the law which the Sn- preme Court declared unconstitutional.
 We repeat that it is one of the most important decisions, as to its bearings on personal liberty, that has been rem dered in many years. It seems plain. too. that if the New York statute is invalid all other State laws of similar character must go down with 1t, and all employers and employees must be permitted to make their own contracts as to the length of a days work. and the right to make it longer or shorter by mutual agreement
 We have no desire to discuss the question of how many hours a man ought to work. Whether the laboring man will be the better for working only eight hours in a day, or whether he might work ten or twelve. Is not In question. We will go so far as to ad- init that if it could be so arranged that no human being would he re- quired to work more than eight hours out of the twenty-four 1t would be bet ter for humanity.
 But such a limitation must be both voluntary and universal. The New York law of 1897 positively forbids an employer to contract for over time. If one of his men is willing to work over time for extra pay he is not allowed to do so, because the law will punish the employer for giving him the extra em- ployment. It matters not how urgent the work may be, or how willing and anxious the man may be to earn some extra money, 1t Is not permitted. In short, all right of contract is denied both the man who works and the one who employs him.
 It ought to be plain that such law depriyes men of all right of choice. There would be just as much of fair ness and consistency in a law which would fix the wages to be paid in any occupation and make 1t illegal to pay any employe one cent above that fixed wage, no matter how competent he might be, or how willing his employer might be to pay him more.
 If the State of Alabama, for example, should enact law declaring that ev- cry employe must work twelve hours out of twenty-four. and making 1t crime to employ a laborer for short CT time, there would be an almost uni versaf protestation from the working men, and a general cry that the law was tyrannical, and an interference with personal liberty. We would en- dorse the protest, bat that law would not diner in the slightest degree, so
 
 the New York statute passed on by the Supreme Court. All such laws do away with the individual right of contract and agreement and are wrong. To come right down to the equities of the matter, laws which hamper the labor ing man or, the employers of labor are equally wrong and an outrage on a free people. Let the right of con- tract remain inviolate. by all means.
 But this is not the only example of what some call 'fussy legislation" that the courts will be called on to deal with. We have heretofore mad scme- thing to say of a recent Indiana law, and we believe Wisconsin has also copied 1t, or is about to do so. having for its object the suppression of the cigarette habit. It would really make it crime, if the law could pc strictly enforced. for any person to buy, sell. use or have possession of cigarettes or cigarette material. It is law which could not and should not be enforced. bad as the cigarette habit Is, because some of Its provisions are really in tolerable. Reading It's provisions we are ready to agree with The New York Times that the ridiculousness of this legislative prohibition is likely to blind many to the outraReousness of 1t. It is. in fact, as scandalous an inter- ference as can be conceived with con- stitutional freedom. It is to be sx- pected that that view of 1t will be ta- ken in Indiana, and that a test case will be made and a popular protest entered Any Indianian who under stood the importance and the magnI- tude of the question involved may be expected to join in the protest, even to the extent of marching in process sion of defiant law-breakers smoking cigarettes, even though he personally detests the practice of smoking cigar cites, and even though hIs own cigar cite, which he publicly smokes in to- ken of protest. should make him ex- tremely ill.,"
 Referring to the marriage of his niece to her riding teacher MT. Carne- T