Butcher, Baker, Tailor

The Kansas Industrial Court Law, famed handiwork of former Governor Henry J. Allen, received a severe blow when the U. S. Supreme Court reversed one of its findings. The Constitutionality of the Kansas law was not directly ruled upon. The ease was one in which the Industrial Court had ruled that Charles Wolff Packing Co., of Topeka, must increase the wages of its employees, although the company was not then operating at a profit.

The opinion of the Supreme Court, delivered by Chief Justice Taft, was apparently aimed as much at the law as at the particular instance of its operation: " It has never been supposed since the adoption of the Constitution that the business of the butcher, or the baker, the tailor, the wood chopper, the mining operator, or the miner [the Kansas law applies to the production and transportation of food, fuel and clothing], was clothed with such public interest that the price of his product or his wages could be fixed by state regulation. . . .

"It [the Act] curtails the right of the employer on the one hand and of the employee on the other to contract about his affairs. This is part of the liberty of the individual protected by ... the 14th Amendment."

Ex-governor Allen nevertheless does not take the view that the Supreme Court's decision renders the Industrial Court powerless. Said he: " I rather expected an adverse decision because I believe when the Industrial Court took the action in question it was placing that section of the law on thin ice. . . . There was no question of emergency. The whole Kansas law was written around the emergency point. This does not take away from the Industrial Court any of its anti-picketing powers nor the power to make wage decisions in an emergency."