The new freedom : $b a call for the emancipation of the generous energies of a people — John Shaqi
The new freedom : $b a call for the emancipation of the generous energies of a peopleWilson, Woodrow
History
The new freedom : $b a call for the emancipation of the generous energies of a people
Wilson, Woodrow
United States -- Politics and government -- 1913-1921; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
And do our laws take note of this curious state of things? Do they even
attempt to distinguish between a man's act as a corporation director and
as an individual? They do not. Our laws still deal with us on the basis of
the old system. The law is still living in the dead past which we have
left behind. This is evident, for instance, with regard to the matter of
employers' liability for workingmen's injuries. Suppose that a
superintendent wants a workman to use a certain piece of machinery which
it is not safe for him to use, and that the workman is injured by that
piece of machinery. Some of our courts have held that the superintendent
is a fellow-servant, or, as the law states it, a fellow-employee, and
that, therefore, the man cannot recover damages for his injury. The
superintendent who probably engaged the man is not his employer. Who is
his employer? And whose negligence could conceivably come in there? The
board of directors did not tell the employee to use that piece of
machinery; and the president of the corporation did not tell him to use
that piece of machinery. And so forth. Don't you see by that theory that a
man never can get redress for negligence on the part of the employer? When
I hear judges reason upon the analogy of the relationships that used to
exist between workmen and their employers a generation ago, I wonder if
they have not opened their eyes to the modern world. You know, we have a
right to expect that judges will have their eyes open, even though the law
which they administer hasn't awakened.
Yet that is but a single small detail illustrative of the difficulties we
are in because we have not adjusted the law to the facts of the new order.
* * * * *
Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me
privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of
commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something.
They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so
watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better
not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
They know that America is not a place of which it can be said, as it used
to be, that a man may choose his own calling and pursue it just as far as
his abilities enable him to pursue it; because to-day, if he enters
certain fields, there are organizations which will use means against him
that will prevent his building up a business which they do not want to
have built up; organizations that will see to it that the ground is cut
from under him and the markets shut against him. For if he begins to sell
to certain retail dealers, to any retail dealers, the monopoly will refuse
to sell to those dealers, and those dealers, afraid, will not buy the new
man's wares.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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