Daily Arizona silver belt., 1908-12-09

judges, the judges of the stamp of tho nresident-elect, who have been fearless
 in opposing labor when it has gon, wrong; but fearless also in holding tt strict account corporations that work
 iniquity. and far-sighted in seeing that
 the workingman gets his rights, are tho men of all others to whom we owe i' that the appeal for such violent anC
 mistaken Legislation has fallen on deaf
 ears, that the agitation for it's passage
 proved to be without substantial basis
 The courts are jeopardized primarily by
 the action of these federal and state judges who show inability or unwilling
 ness to put stop to the wrongdoing
 of very rich men under modern indus
 trial conditions, and inability or unwill.
 ingness to give relief to men of small
 means or wageworkcrs who are crushed
 down by these modern industrial condi.
 tions; who, in other words. fail to nn.
 derstand and apply the needed remedies for the new wrongs produced by the
 new and highly complex social and in- dustrial civilization which has grown up
 in the last half century
 The rapid changes in our social and industrial life which have attended this
 rapid growth have made it necessary
 that, in applying to concrete cases the
 great rule of right laid down in our
 constitution, there should be full un-
 derstanding and appreciation of the new
 conditions to which the rules are to be
 applied. What would have been an in- fringement upon liberty half century
 ago may be the necessary safeguard of liberty today. What would have been
 an injury to property then may be nec-
 essary to the enjoyment of property
 now. Every judicial decision involves
 two terms-one, an interpretation of the
 law; the other, the understanding of
 the facts to which it may be applied.
 The great mass of our judicial officers are I believe alive to these changes of conditions which so materially affect the
 performance of their judicial duties.
 Our judicial system is sound and eff
 fective at core, and it remains, and
 must ever be maintained, as the safe guard of those principles of liberty and
 justice which stand at the foundation of American institutions; for, as Burke finely said, when liberty and justice are separated, neither is safe. There are, however, some members of the judicial body who have Jagged behind in their understanding of these great and vital changes in the body polite, whose minds
 have never been opened to the new ap- plications of the old principles made necessary by the new conditions. Judges of this stamp do lasting harm by their decisions, because they convince poor men in need of protection that the ,rto nf hn
 norant of and out of sympathy with their needs, and profoundly indifferent or hostile to any proposed remedy. To such men it seems a cruel mockefy to have any court decide against them on the ground that it desires to preserve "lberty' in purely technical form, by withholding liberty in any real and constructive sense. It is desirable that the legislative body should possess, and wherever necessary exercise, the power to determine whether in a given ease employer and employees are not on an equal footing, so that the necessities of the latter compel them to submit to such exaetions as to hours and eondi tions of labor as unduly to tax their strength; and only mischief can result when such determination Is upset on the ground that there must he no Gin terference with the liberty to contract --often q merely academic "liberty, v the exercise of which is the negation of real liberty.
 There are certain decisions bv various courts which have been exceedingly det. rimental to the rights of wageworkers This is true of all the decisions that decide that men and women are, by the constitution, guaranteed their fiber ty' to contract to enter a dangerous occupation, or to work an undesirable or improper number of hours, or to work in unhealthy surroundings; and there fore can not recover damages when maimed in that occupation, and can not be forbidden to work what the legis- laturc decides is an excessive number of hours, or to carry on the work under conditions which the legislature decides to be unhealthy. The most dangerous occupations are often the poorest paid and those where the hours of work are longest; and in many cases those who go into them are driven by necessity so great that they have practically no alternative. Decisions such as those alluded to above nullify the legislative effort to protect the wage-workers who most need protection from those employ CTS who take advantage of their grind. | ing need. They halt or hamper the | for securing better and more equitable conditions of labor. The talk | about preserving to the misery hunted | beings who make contracts for such | service their "liberty' to make them, is either to speak in a spirit of heartlese irony or else to show an. utter lack of | knowledge of the conditions of life among the great masses of our fellow a lack of which units a judge to do good service just as it would unfit any executive or legislative officer
 There is also, l think, ground for the belief that substantial injustice is often by employees in consequence of the custom of courts issuing temper lry injunctions without notice to them, them for contempt of court in instances where, as matter of fact, they have no knowledge of any Outside of organized la bor there is q widespread feeling that this system often works great injustice to wageworkers when their efforts to
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