The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1936-05-21
Labor Now Is Left
to Wage Own Fight
BY RAYMOND CLAPPER

WASHINGTON, May 21-The New Guffey coal
w bill seeks to salvage from the old measure
knocked out by the Supreme Court, the price Liking
provisions
If these can be made to stick the plan is to then
leave 1t to John L. Lewis and his mine workers union
to enforce the nvadated labor provisions by the old
anarchic method of labor warfare-pulling strike
wherever an operator tries to ut wages.
There is little doubt among informed persons but
that Lewis and his labor union powerful enough
to look out for themselves. The regret among some
who stop to think about that the Supreme Courts
action forces retrogreSsion by killing an attempt
to adjust industrial disputes peaceably through
public agencies and thereby leaving labor to look out
for itself with club.
This public is privileged in this industrial war
fare to stand back and take the consequences.
Even this effort to salvage part of the Guffey Act
Is gamble. Nobody knows what the Supreme Court
would do with the reenacted price fixing provisions
The court did not specifically throw them out on
their merits
Chief Justice Hughes and the three dissenters
said this part of the law should have been upheld
The five majority justices said that since the labor
provisions were unconstitutional, the price fixing
provisions logically go out also. the tail with the
hide If Congress sends back just the TAIL and makes
no irritating references to the hide, perhaps the
justices will be more lenient.
But nobody knows. 1t all depends upon how the
court may happen to interpret the commerce clause
This clause has been football of judicial inter.
probation for years The courts Interpretation has
varied from time to time, depending upon the judges
TN general, up to the advent of the New Deal the
Il tendency had been to broaden the scope of the
commerce clause. Since 1888 the tendency has been
to it until unless you actually catch it
wheels, rolling across state line, it is apt not to
be considered interstate commerce.
At first under the antitrust laws, the court held
that operations of stockyards local Thirty
years later 1t upheld Federal regulation Of stock
yards because of their effect upon interstate
commerce.
From 1910 on, Federal regulation broadened
rapidly with Supreme Court approval reaching into
food and drugs, white slavery, theft of motor We
hicles inspection of food animals, and many other
activities not in themselves commerce
Regulation of stockyardS and grain exchanges
although local activities was upheld because these
activities in their effects extended into other
states.
Interstate movement involved in some of the
cases was very slight or incidental Generally. it
not the effect upon movement of goods which
important but the effect of the practices upon
business In other states-upon price supply or COM
petitors
in the boycott cases. such as the Bedford stone
case, the court held that refusal of union workers
in other states to handle nonunion goods was an
undue restraint on interstate commerce
corner on the New York Cotton Exchange was
held to be an unreasonable restraint of interstate
commerce. Vandevanter wrote that opinion He
said the effect of the cotton corner on the nation
wide price of coton-price mind you not ransporta-
tion-woud burden the due course of trade and
commerce among the states. Regulation of grain
exchanges upheld although grain exchanges
affected movement only through effect on price
Taft as chief justice held that sales of an article
which directly affect the country wide price OF any
article directly affect the countrywide commerce
IN It,"