The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-06-04

Washington, June 4.-Few, if any, sessions of the supreme court have been as momentous as that which closed when Chief Justice Hughes and his eight robed colleagues filed out of the supreme court chamber yester- day.
 The far-reaching effect of its decisions-on the gold clause, the MIRA, the Frazier-Lemke farm mortgage act-has subject ed the court to reaching scru- tiny. To-day, for the first time since the elder Roosevelt and the elder LaFollette demand ed restraints on the power of the court, that demand is being heard again.
 Even some of the senate lib- erals who fought tooth and nail against the MIRA, now are wOn- dering how economic and social change can be accomplished in the face of the obstacle of the supreme court.
 Take the most important fun- danientals of the NRA-aDolition of child labor, the minimum wage, maximum hours, and the right of collective bargaining. Most of these already have been vetoed individually by the supreme court.
 Child Labor
 In few civilized countries have children been as ruthlessly ex- plotted industrially as in the United States, and 1t was not until after ten years of bitter struggle that congress, in 1916, passed a law abolishing child labor. The vote was 52 to 12 in the senate and 337 to 46 in the house.
 Despite this overwhelming en. dorsement, the supreme court ruled 1t unconstitutional. And when congress, under the spur of widespread indignation, passed a second law in 1919, the court again tore it from the statute books.
 Now, sixteen years later, the proposed constitutional amend ment has not yet passed and child labor was curbed only by the now stricken MIRA.
 Minimum Wage
 Of again, take the minimum wage. Provision for such a wage-already adopted in most of Europe--was passed by the Oregon legislature in 1914. Twice it was unanimously upheld by the Oregon supreme court, and when 1t came to the United States supreme court, the vote was a tie-Justice Brandeis not voting.
 On the strength of this stale. mate, the states of Massachusetts, Minnesota, Arkansas and Wash- ington adopted minimum wage laws and were upheld by their supreme courts. But in 1919, when Congress passed a nini- mum wage act for the District of Columbia, it went once more to the highest of all courts.
 By this time, the personnel of the black-robed jurists had changed. President Harding had appointed a-conservative George Sutherland and Pierce Butler, former railroad attorneys
 And they ruled out the mini- mum wage. By one stroke they set at naught the votes of hum dreds of elected legislators and the solemn judgment of 30 State Supreme Court jurists.
 Justice Sutherland's opinion was bitterly attacked by Chief Justice Taft and Oliver Holmes, but it remained the law of the land.
 New Deal Laws
 A host of other state legisla- tion-some of it Fundamental to the MIRA and to other New Deal projects-now has been wiped out by the supreme court.
 When Kansas proposed the compulsory arbitration of labor disputes: when Oklahoma en- deavored to restrict competition in the ice industry; when Ten- nessee acted to regulate the price of gasoline; when New Jersey sought to control the fees of employment bureaus; when q number of states moved to limit utility profits-ail these were set