Middletown transcript., 1917-03-24
ADAMSON ACT
IS HELD VALID
Congress Has Powerto Regulate
Hours OF Labor and Wages.
NO RIGHT TO TlE'UP ROADS
Engaged In Public Business, Tribunal
Says, and Compulsory Arbi-
tration Can Be
Invoked

holding Congress to be clothed with
any and all power necessary to keep
open the channels of interstate COM
merce, the Supreme Court, dividing
five to four, sustained the Adamson
law as constitutional and enforceable
in every feature.
The immediate effect of the decision
will be to fix a permanent eight-hour
basic day in computing wage scales on
interstate railroads, for which a
nationwide strike twice has been
threatened, and to give, effective from
January this year, increases in
wages to trainmen of about Is per
cent, at cost to the railroads esti-
mated at from $40,0OO,00O to $5O,OOO,-
600 year.
The Court, through Chief Justice
White, declared both carriers and
their employees engaged in a business
charged with public interest subject
to the right of Congress to COM
pulsorily arbitratc a dispute affecting
the operating of that business.
Right To Tie Up Traffic Denied.
Whatever would be the right of an
employe engaged in private business
to demand such wages as he desires,
to leave the employment if he does
not get them and by concert of action
to agree with others to leave on the
same conditions" said the opinion
"such rights are necessarily subject
to limitation when employment is ac-
cepted in business charged with
public interest and as to which the
power to regulate commerce by Con-
gress applied and the resulting right
to fix in case of disagreement and dis
pute a standard of wages as we have
seen necessarily obtained"
In delivering the opinion, the Chief
Justice departed at this point from his
written text to emphasize the position
of men operating trains in a time of
national emergency by comparing
them to soldiers facing an enemy.
Coming on the heels of the ccnces-
sion of the eight-hour basic day by
the railroads at New York, to avert
the threatened strike, Mondays de-
cisiOn is regarded as largely supplant-
ing that agreement and also removing
for all time, through the broadest
Interpretation of Congressional author
ity outlined by the court, the
probability of future transportation
paralysis.
Four Justices Cissented.
Joining with the Chief Justice in
Kenna and Holmes, his immediate
seniors in point of service, and JUS
tices Brandeis and Clarke, junior mem
bers. Dissenting for various reasons
were Justices Day, Van Devanter, Pit
hey and McReynolds.
The majority upheld the public
right to have interstate commerce
as basic principle
paramount to interests of the railroads
or their operatives. both declared to
be in public service and subject to the
supreme unrestricted power of Con-
gress to take any action necessary to
maintain freedom and uninterruption
of interstate commerce. Either as
law fixing wages or hours of labor, the
court decided, Congress had authority
to enact the Adamson statute.
"The public interest begets a public
right of regulation to the full extent
necessary to secure and protect it,"
said the opinion, adding that in the
of threatened destructive
of national transportation,
Congress acted within it's power in
providing a wage standard and other
means necessary to protect the public
interests