The second case is the so-called New York Bake-Shop case. In New York City, as in most large cities, the baking business is likely to be carried on under unhygienic conditions, conditions which tell against the welfare of the workers, and therefore against the welfare of the general public. The New York Legislature passed, and the New York Governor signed, a bill remedying these improper conditions. New York State was the only body that could deal with them; the Nation had no power whatever in the matter. Acting on information which to them seemed ample and sufficient; acting in the interest of the public and in accordance with the demand of the public, the only governmental authority having affirmative power in the matter, the Governor and the Legislature of New York, took the action which they deemed necessary, after what inquiry and study were needed to satisfy them as to the conditions and as to the remedy. The Governor and the Legislature alone had the power to remedy the abuse. But the Supreme Court of the United States possessed, and unfortunately exercised, the negative power of not permitting the abuse to be remedied. By a five to four vote they declared the action of the State of New York unconstitutional. They were, of course, themselves powerless to make the remotest attempt to provide a remedy for the wrong which undoubtedly existed, and their refusal to permit action by the State did not confer any power upon the Nation to act. In effect, it reduced to impotence the only body which did have power, so that in this case the decision, although nominally against State rights, was really against popular rights, against the democratic principle of government by the people under the forms of law. If such decisions as these two indicated the Court’s permanent attitude, there would be real and grave cause of alarm; for such decisions, if consistently followed up, would upset our whole system of popular Government. I am, however, convinced, both from the inconsistency of these decisions with the tenor of other decisions, and furthermore from the very fact that they are in such flagrant and direct contradiction to the spirit and needs of the time, that sooner or later they will be explicitly or implicitly reversed. I mention them merely to illustrate the need of having a truly National system of government under which the people can deal effectively with all problems, meeting those that affect the people as a whole by affirmative Federal action, and those that merely affect the people of one locality by affirmative State action.