Evening star., 1937-04-11
Duel Now on Between
Roosevelt and Hughes.
BY OVEN L. SCOTT.


issue future course for the Nation
This contest, until now, has been
hard-fought but obscure. President
Roosevelt wanted his way of an all
powerful Federal Government. The
Chief Justice, joining with the Supreme
Court majority, denied him that way,
but offered no other. The President,
baked, carried his fight to the people.
won that fight and then defied the court
or anybody else to show him how he
could fulfill his promises so long as the
justices stood across his path.
Chief Justice Hughes took up the
challenge. BY skillful maneuvering, in
court decision, he now is able to offer
the court majority's answer.
The question is whether this present
carefully designed Supreme Court thrust
will prove effective enough to topple
lunge he is making to force the justices
out of his way. That crucial phase OF
the duel is the one the people are
witnessing.
This conflict of ideas is clearly out
lined by late developments. President
Roosevelt is seen standing for National
Government armed with authority to
tell employers what minimum wages
they shall pay their workers, how they
shall bargain with those workers and
how to run their business in many other
ways. He also wants National Gov
ernment strong enough to control farm
production and to regulate marketing
of farm products.
Chief Justice Hughes stands with
majority of justices who contend that
the people, through the Constitution,
have given no such broad grant of
power to their central government. But,
finally, through a series of carefully
dovetailed decisions, the court has
opened the door for action by State
governments to apply controls denied
to the Federal Government.
AS result of those decisions:
Each one OF the forty-eight States
today possesses the power, when the
public interest is involved, to establish
minimum wages for woman workers and
by direct inference, for man workers
as we'll. Seventeen States and the Dis
trict OF Columbia already are prepared
to function in that field.
In addition, each one OF the States
now is assured Of power to regulate the
price OF farm products when the public
interest is involved, and, by direct in
ference, each State can attempt to con-
troll farm production as well.
Furthermore, every one Of the States
is possessed of power to protect labor
in it's collective bargaining rights and,
again by clear inference, employers
can be forced by State governments to
recognize representatives of majority
of their workmen as spokesmen for all.
Several industrial States are preparing
to operate in this field.
But, more than all of that, the Su-
preme Court majority now holds that
If Congress approves, as it has done in
the case Of prison-made goods-one
State with laws protecting agriculture
and labor can bar from its borders goods
from another State not possessed of
equally effective laws
Thus: The way is opened for State
N. r. AS, State A. A. AS, State LABOR
acts. States, rather than the Nation,
can become the laboratories in which
economic control experiments are tested.
These State experiments. in turn, can
be protected by a Federal enabling act
under which they could block of COM
petition from goods produced in States
not applying similar standards.
Chief Justice Hughes Is credited with
shaping this formula as the alternative
to the Presidents formula for national
control The pattern Of that formula
became complete when Justice Owen
Roberts agreed that States have power
to Ak minimum wages.
Does all of that leave President Roose-
velt flat-footed?
Instead, he is convinced that the
Supreme Court has laid trap for itself.
Back of that presidential idea lies much
recent experience.
State milk-control laws have been
breaking down in practice. one after
another, due to competition from milk
coming from States without control laws.
State laws protecting labor have been
followed by migrations Of industries into
States without protective laws.
Until now, individual State action Of
fers record of rather regular break
down, due to competition from States
in which comparable controls are not
applied.
But doesn't the new formula offered
by the recent pattern Of court decisions
open way out Of that situation? Would
not backward States be forced into line
If the more progressive States barred the
products of these backward States from
sale within their borders?
The answer seems to lie in the past.
Back in the 1780s-more than $50
years ago-the individual American
States undertook an experiment with
internal tariffs. One State put a tariff
on some of the products of another
State. That State retaliated, and soon
the battle was on Tariff troubles were
major factor in stirring interest toward
Federal constitution. That Constitu-
ton bars State tariffs.
Since 1887 the United States have af-
forded the worlds richest free trade
market. Occasionally hare-ups have oc-
curred-as recently as two or three
years ago. when Wisconsin barred cattle
from Texas and Texas retaliated by
barring dairy products from Wisconsin,
This squabble finally was Strengthened
out. Then Ohio imposed a special tax
on imports of natural gas from West
Virginia. Some other experiments have
been tried.
But now, according to the formula
receiving court approval. Congress can
permit one State to bar goods from
another State produced under condi-
tions that do not meet the legally