The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-09-05
SIGNIFICANT CONFIDENCE.

most important fact for us in con nection with the railroad crisis, be- tween the brotherhoods and their employers, is the supreme con fdence shown by the railroad presi- dents in their ability to have an eight hour law thrown out by the courts as unconstitutional.
 It is quite beside the question that when the constitution was writ ten or adopted there were no such things as railroads. that machine industry had hardly begun It's gl- eantic development. It IS lmma- terial too that the constitutlohai convention had any idea of legislat- ing for an industrial age that is as different from the present as the present will be from that of another a thousand years hence. The consu- tution. in the hands of lawyers, is expected to prove the protecting guardian of the railroad companies in their troubles today
 This means If it means anything that the courts in which rests the ipterpretation of the constitution, have made themselves the railylns ground of privilege and the bull warks of the interests against any tide of reform.
 We have seen quoted somewhere recently a statement by Chief Justice Walter Clarke of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, before the Boston Economic Club, in the year 1907: Forms of gov ernment remain long after changes of the substance. We should not delude ourselves with the idea. that the people govern themselves ih this country, and that through thelr Congress and State Legislatures they shape their own destinies, when in truth and in fact they can not pass a single statute of any kind or nature, however urgently demanded, unless the statute shall
 
 who happen at the time to compose the highest court. In some states two lawyers Ga majority of three) can thus prevent or nullify all le- gislation'.
 Now the majority of the judges holding positions under the federal government have been corporation lawyers. Very few of the present regime on the Supreme Bench but have been railroad attorneys, and it is easy enough to understand with their definite views upon the rights of corporations and the prl yileges of railroads, what their de cision is likely to be in the even' of presidents of former roads iron which they enjoyed retainers should seek to annul the eight hour law.
 It is with the greatest confidence that capitalist interests everywhere rely upon the judiciary body to re verse the findings of lower elective courts or to annul the acts of tn Legislatures. And it is only fair U racoqnize that wherein such system prevails, the people do n more than legislate subject to tn approval of lawyers in ermine.
 At least we can trace the fall O two nations in South Africa to th efforts made by the Transvaal gov ernment to make it's Volksraad, Congress, supreme as the governln body.
 case arose wherein great cap talist interests in the Rand gole fields obtained damages from tn Transyaal government on account the Republic proclaiming a publi fields in a certain district and whe claims had been staked, anullln its own proclamation. The inJure stakers who were merely the too of special gold mining interests c the Rand were awarded damages I the Supreme Court. President KIT ger called special meeting of tf Raad, and enacted law wheret all judicial decisions were subject
 revision by the legislative bod This caused all the great mlnir interests in Johannesburg to sta an agitation which eliminated
 the Jameson raid and later on a result of the friction artificial