Vital Decision

"The very foundation of the government is gone. After today no man can tell just what are the powers of the President and Congress.

"Yesterday we supposed we had a government of specified limited powers. Today, no one knows."

So said Justice James Clark McReynolds, "one of the most detached, most solitary, least worldly men in public life," when a majority of his fellows of the U. S. Supreme Court upheld the power of the President to remove post-masters and other statutory Federal officials. This vital decision was made last week in a suit brought by the late Frank S. Myers to recover back pay for the full period of his appointment as Portland, Ore., Postmaster. President Wilson had removed him without a hearing and without the consent of the Senate. The Court said last week that he could not get his pay: he was legally ousted.

Chief Justice William Howard Taft handed down a 55-page decision in which he said: "To hold otherwise would make it impossible for the President in case of political or other differences with the senate or congress to take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Dembitz Brandeis (that brilliant Jew who puts the "rights of man" above all else) dissented along with Justice McReynolds.

Even the makers of the Constitution were unable to agree on the question of the appointment of statutory Federal employes; so a compromise was written to allow the President power to appoint them "by and with the consent of the Senate," without mentioning any procedure for their removal. Then in 1867, the Tenure of Office Act was passed to prevent the President from removing certain classes of postmasters. Last week's decision declares the 1867 act unconstitutional, and interprets in the broadest sense the President's power of removal.