The Connecticut labor news., 1923-04-27
DISSENTING OPINION OF JUSTICE
 HOLMES IN MINIMUM WAGE CASE

While Chief Justice Taft and Justice Sanford dissented from the majority opinion holding the WOmen's minimum wage law, enacted by Congress to be un- constitutional, they did not subscribe to i the strong dissenting opinion written by Justice Holmes. The dissent of the latter eliminating lists of legal citations made to support his contention, is as follows The question III this state Is the broad one Whether Congress can establish minimum rates of wages for women i'll , the District of Columbia with due pro- vision for special circumstances or whether we must say that Congress has no power to meddle with the matter at all.
 1 To me notwithstanding the deference due to the prevailing judgment of the 1 court, the power Of Congress seems ab- i solutely free from doubt The end, to 1 remove conditions leading to i'll health immortality, and the deterioration of the race. no one would deny to be within the scope of constitutional legislation. l The means are means that have the ap- proVal of Congress of many states, and Ot all those governments from which we have learned our greatest lessons. When so many intelligent persons. who have studied the matter more than any of us can, have thought that the means are effective and are worth the price, 1t seems to me impossible to deny that the belief reasonably may be held by reason able men.
 If the law encountered no other objec- tIOn than that the means bore no relation to the end or that they cost too much l do not suppose that anyone would ven ture to say that 1t was bad.
 1 agree, of course, that a law answer ing the foregoing requirements might be lnvalidated by specific provisions of the Constitution. For instance, it might take private property without just com pensation. But in the present instance the only objection that can be urged is found within the vague contours of the fifth amendment prohibiting the de- pr1vlng any person of liberty or prop erty without due process of law. To that 1 turn.
 The earlier decisions upon the same words in the fourteenth amendment be- gan within our memory and went no further than an unpretentious assertion of the liberty to follow the ordinary callings.
 Later that innocuous generality was expanded into the dogma Liberty of contract. Contract Is not specially men, tioned in the text that have to construe. It smere1y an example of doing what you wait u NO, ClllIJOulCd III llIS WOId liberty. But pretty much all law con- sists in forbidding men to do some things that they want to do, and contract is no more exempt from law than other acts.
 Without enumerating all the restric- tive laws that have been upheld 1 will mention a few that seem to me to have interfered with liberty of contract quite as seriously and directly as the one be- fore us. Usury laws prohibit contracts by which a man receives more than so much interest for the money that he lends. Statutes of frauds restrict many contracts to certain forms. Some Sum, day laws prohibit practically all con- tracts during one-seventh of our whole life. Insurance rates may be regulated,
 
 I confess that 1 do not understand the principle on which the power to fix a minimum for the wages of women can be denied by those who admit the power to fix maximum for their hours of work 1 fully assent to the proposition that here as elsewhere the distinctions of the law are distinctions of degree. but