Montana labor news., 1936-08-20
ECONOMIC BIAS NODDED MINIMUM WAGE
DECISION, JUSTICE H. F. STONE IMPLIES

Britain and its four commemorative,
have found that wage regulation is an
appropriate corrective for serious social
and economic maladjustments growing
out Of inequality in bargaining power
precludes, for me, any assumption that
it is a remedy beyond the bounds Of
reason.
at is difficult to imagine any grou-
nds, other than our own personal econ
omic predictions, for saying that the
contract of employment is any the less
an appropriate subject of legislation
than are scores of others, in dealing
with which this Court has held that
Legislatures may curtail individual free
dom in the public interest.
III it is a subject upon which there
is power to legislate at all, the Four
teenth Amendment makes no distinc-
ton between methods by which Legis-
latures may deal with it, any more than
it ~proscribes the regulation OF one
term Of a bargain more than another
if it is properly the subject Of regula-
ton"
Ruthless Employers Impose Low
Wages
In the majority opinion %invalidating
the New York law emphasis was laid
on the Supreme Courts ruling a num-
Der Of years ago invalidating the mini
mum wage act for the District of Col
umbia. Referring to this case Justice
Stone said that in the years which have
interviewed since then I'VE have had OPP
portunity to learn that a wage is not
always the result Of free bargaining be-
tween employers and employees; that
it may be one forced upon employees
by their economic necessities and en-
ployers by the most ruthless Of their
competitors.
1--WE have had opportunity to per-
ceive more clearly that a wage in
sufficient to support the worker does
not visit its consequences upon him
alone; that it may affect profoundly the
entire economic structure Of society
and, in any case, that il casts on every
taxpayer, and on government itself,
the burden Of solving the problems of
poverty, subsistence, health and morals
of large numbers in the community.
Problems Are National
Because Of their nature and extent,
these are public problems. A genera
ton ago they were for the individual to
solve; today they are the burden Of the
Nation. l can perceive no mor OBJ
lection, on constitutional grounds, to
their solution by requiring an industry
to bear the subsistence cost Of the la
Dor which it employs, than to the i'm
position upon it Of the cost Of its in
dustrial accidents.
at is not for the courts to resolve
doubts whether the remedy by wage
regulation is as efficacious as many be-
lieve, or is better than some other, or
is better ever than the blind operation
of uncontrolled economic forces. The
Legislature must be free to choose un-
less government is to be rendered inn
potent. The Fourteenth Amendment
has no more embedded in the Consti-
tuition our preference for some parti-
cular set of economic beliefs than it
has adopted, in the name of liberty, the
system of theology which we may hap
pen to approve"
In conclusion Justice Stone said that
the Supreme Court should follow its
own former decisions in cases involv-
ing limitation of contracts and "leave
the selection and the method Of the
solution of the problems to which the
statute is addressed where it seems to
me the Constitution has left them, to
the legislative branch of the Govern
ment."