Hey Rub-a-dub-dub: A Book of the Mystery and Wonder and Terror of LifeDreiser, Theodore
General
Hey Rub-a-dub-dub: A Book of the Mystery and Wonder and Terror of Life
Dreiser, Theodore
American essays -- 20th century
Thus, in illustration: (1) A Federal judge (1919) ruled that although
Congress (1918) had forbidden any one to compel children of ten or more
years of age to labor in cotton mills, still it was unconstitutional for
Congress so to forbid and those who wished could so employ children.
Result, hundreds of thousands of children returned to eleven hours per
day factory labor.
(2) A New Jersey judge, one Gumere by name, ruled (1900) that a child’s
life, lost in an accident on a railroad or other public conveyance, was
not worth more than one dollar, the child not being as yet a source of
profit to its parents.
(3) An Ohio circuit judge (William H. Taft, afterwards President of the
United States) ruled (1893) that quitting work without the consent of
the employer was a criminal offense on the part of an employee.
(4) The Federal Supreme Court ruled (1908) that arbitration in labor
disputes is unconstitutional, therefore something which an employer may
not even enter upon with his employees.
(5) The Oregon Supreme Court decided (1903) that a citizen might be
legally held in duress (jailed) for one month without trial--this in the
face of explicit prohibition on the part of the American Constitution.
(6) The Massachusetts Supreme Court held in one dispute (1906) that
where conditions are unsatisfactory there is no remedy open to labor
save by individual and personal suit; union or combined action being
illegal or unconstitutional.
(7) Four magnates, two of them controlling the production and two the
distribution of milk for and in New York City, decided (January 10,
1919) that since they could not agree as to how the profits of the sale
of milk in New York City were to be divided among them, New York was to
have no milk until they could agree. Time of city without milk, one
month.
(8) One Barnet Baff, wholesale chicken merchant in New York City, was
murdered because he would not enter upon a scheme with other
chicken-wholesalers to fix prices and extort a higher profit from the
public. Secondary executors, but not primary instigators or murderers,
were caught and electrocuted.
(9) In Lachnor vs. New York (198 U. S. 45) a majority of the judges of
the New York Court of Appeals held unconstitutional a law limiting the
hours of labor of bakers, many of whom (women) were forced to toil
twelve hours daily in cellars to earn wages barely sufficient to keep
them alive. The Court held that this law was void because it interfered
with freedom of contract.
(10) In Ives vs. South Buffalo Ry. Co. (94 N. E. R. 431), a case in
which a railroad employee, crippled for life while at work and without
“contributory negligence,” sued for recompense, the New York Court of
Appeals unanimously decided that the law under which the suit was
brought was unconstitutional. The judges admitted the injustice, since
the man was helpless, but held the Constitution responsible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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