The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-01-27
ROOSEVELT CLOSES CONTROVERSY WITH
 GOVERNOR BALDWIN

~ and property without due process of law" You say specifically as to rail- road employees that this section of
 the law "denies them one and all that liberty of contract which the ConstI- tuition of the United States secures to every one within it's Jurisdiction" Tn all earnestness and sincerity I ask, what other conclusion is there for a
 man who gives language it's ordinary
 meaning to draw from your opinion in your Judgment it was competent for the employe to bind himself not to be compensated if he lost life or limb in the railroad occupation? l again insist, as have repeatedly
 insisted in my letters. that I have construed your decision fairly and ac cording to its obvious meaning.
 I am informed that you were not constrained to make this decision by any previous precedents of your own court. One of the very cases which you mentioned in your letter to me shows, I am told, that this was the situation, I have read with interest that decision. Darrigan V. N. Y. & N. B. R. R. Co.,, Conn. 2S5. In that case you will remember, yoil were tive engineer had been injured by the collision of two trains through the carelessness of train dispatcher. There was g. printed rule of the com pany, which had been placed in this engineers hands when he went 70 compensation of employees covers all risk or liability to accident" You urg- ed as lawyer for that railroad that this rule virtually expressed con-
 tract between the railroad and the employe. and that the emp1oye should not be compensated, because his in jury was the result of a risk which he had voluntarily taken upon him. self. Nevertheless, the court did not accept your argument. It left the for decision in this particular case. It said:
 When such question is presented we may be called upon to consider whether public policy will permit a
 railroad company to make such a contract with it's employees
 When, after the passage of years, you became, instead of counsel for the railroad, judge of the highest court of your state you decided in
 of the law shut the door of justice upon the crippled enploye, not only shut the door, but locked it, sealed it and barricaded 1t by placing the Fifth Amendment of the United States. Con- stitution between the employe and urine, in my judgment, and I ven ture to say in the judgment of thou
 saands of citizens, many of whom dif- fer with me fundamentally on other matters, was unjust. unreasona ble, reactionary in the extreme and threat
 ened the actual welfare of countless thousands of workmen. conceive it to be not only right, but a pub lie duty, to criticise it as I did.
 If the letters which I sent to you language and added my comments are libellous. then every labor leader who ventures to agitate for reform in accident law is in danger of @ libel suit, and every man who in an effi- cient and effective instead of a half will be in a very real danger of 2 libel suit, provided the interest at tackled is sufficiently powerful to un- dertake the suit and deems the case important enough to warrant such ac ton. All proper public discussions of the principles set forth by you in your decision would be at an end if it were once settled that words such as I have used offer groundwork for Q libel suit Under this theory of ju- dicial exemption from just criticism, the proper way to have dealt with Lincoln in '58, when he criticised the Dred Scott decision in language infin- itely more severe than any words of sued for libel by Chief Justice Ia ney. This extraordinary doctrine which you seem to advance amounts to notice that the doctrine of lese majesty, as applied in the most auto cratic governments of the world, is to be carried to it's fullest extent against American citizens discussing their public servants and candidates for their suffrages. The esta blishment of such a principle would be from my standpoint so outrageous. would rep resent such an infamous wrong against, the principles of American government, that I feel obliged to sink my own personal wishes and to accept the issue if you tender 1t to me.
 Let me repeat that I cannot treat this case, or our controversy about it, as merely personal to me-, I hold that the growth of our industrial sys- tenn and the enormous changes in our social and industrial life during the past sixty or seventy years render it imperative that there shall be a re- shaping of legislative action if the interests of the wage worker and the laborer are to be served. In this opinion I am fortified by the enlight- ened judgment of the courts and the opinion of far-seeing judges.
 I hold in my hand as I write the report of one of the best commissions which ever performed public service in the consideration of this enor- mously important question of indus
 
 the New York Legislature of a com mission appointed to inquire into the question of employers liability and other matters. It contains a num- Der of letters from judges concern ing the status of the injured work men under the law in New York. These judges are among the most learned in the state. They are unan- imous in finding that the law which they are called upon to apply in these cases is out of date, is in essen tial particulars unjust, and requires change. Their criticism is far more sweeping than any statement of mine. They state that the interests of jus tice require that law to be changed and improved. With these letters are letters from four of the judges of the United States courts sitting in New York, fone of them a former dis tinguished justice of the Connecticut courts. They are also of the opin- ion that justice demands fundamen- tai changes in that law. These let ters show the sympathetic spirit of these judges toward the great judi cial function of doing justice, and their desire that the law-making pow CT should interpose it's hand, SO that through such legislation justice might be done. These criticisms, more over, in a state which is already on record in a decision of its highest court that contracts such as you say railroad employees have an inalien- able, constitutional right to make are against public policy of the state. and are void, even though there was no statute forbidding such contracts. The thing which the highest court of New