The Samuel Gompers Papers

        Again the judiciary has set itself up as the paramount body over the legislative and executive branches of the government of our country.

        Judge Boyd, in Federal Court at Greensboro, N.C., has declared unconstitutional and void the law enacted by Congress and approved by the President to protect the life of young and innocent children from exploitation.

        The Congress used its taxing power to drive the manufacture of phosphorus matches out of existence.3 The same taxing power was exercised for the protection of the dairy interests against the competition of oleomargarine, and the exercising of this taxing power is sustained by the courts, but when the same power is used to safeguard the life and health and promote the welfare of the children of to-day, the future citizens of our republic, such a course is declared invalid and of no effect.

        When congress classified matches produced under poisonous and non-poisonous conditions and distinguished natural dairy products from artificial ones and based its discrimination and taxation upon such classifications, this exercise of the taxing power was considered constitutional, but when congress attempts to classify products produced under life destroying circumstances or conditions (child labor) from that produced by adult workers and predicates a tax upon these humane distinctions, we are told by Judge Boyd that such a humane action and classification of Congress interferes with state rights. If ever a classification and differentiation in taxation is justified it certainly is in the case of protecting the life and health of innocent children.

        The Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor, in session assembled, can not help but enter its protest, not only against the unwarrantable intervention by the judiciary of the rights of Congress in expressing the will of the people, but in this special instance against legislation which every intelligent patriotic and humanity loving citizen holds to be justifiable and essential. No where in the constitution of the United States is there vested in the judiciary the right to declare unconstitutional a law passed by the Congress of the United States and approved by the president, or if vetoed by the President, passed over his veto by a two-thirds vote of the House and the Senate. Some day, and may it be soon, the people and the citizenship of our country will demand from congress, and congress will heed the mandate to restore the sovereign right of the congress of the United States to enact legislation and deny to the judicial branch of the government the right to annul or vitiate legislation for the protection of the rights and interests and the promotion of the welfare of the people of our country.

        The Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor protests against the course pursued by Judge Boyd and appeals to the Congress to rectify the wrong and to bring the judiciary within the folds of its component, and not dominating part of the government of our republic.

        In addition, and in the meantime, the decision just rendered should be appealed to the highest court of our land, and it is to be strongly hoped that the United States Supreme Court will remove the blemish that Judge Boyd has put upon the judiciary of our land and prevent the children of our nation from falling into the grasping and greedy hands of exploiters and from grinding their bones into profits.