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"The economic conditions which have supervened [since the District of Columbia law was invalidated in 1923] . . . make it not only appropriate but we think imperative that in deciding the present case the subject should receive fresh consideration. . . . What can be closer to the public interest than the health of women and their protection from unscrupulous and overreaching employers?
"In each [prior] case, the violation alleged by those attacking minimum wage regulation for women is deprivation of freedom of contract. What is this freedom? "The Constitution does not speak of freedom of contract. It speaks of liberty and prohibits the deprivation of liberty without due process of law.
"In prohibiting that deprivation the Constitution does not recognize an absolute and uncontrollable liberty. . . .
"But the liberty safeguarded is liberty in a social organization which requires the protection of law against the evils which menace the health, safety, morals, and welfare of the people. . . . The exploitation of a class of workers who are in an unequal position with respect to bargaining power and are thus relatively defenseless against the denial of a living wage is not only detrimental to their health and well-being but casts a direct burden for their support upon the community. What these workers lose in wages the taxpayers are called upon to pay. The bare cost of living must be met."
His blunt conclusion: "The case of Adkins v. Children's Hospital [District of Columbia case] should be, and it is, overruled. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Washington is affirmed."
Railway Labor. Though it failed to rule on the National Labor Relations Act, the Court did uphold, unanimously, the model from which it was drawn—the Railway Labor Act passed in 1926 and amended in 1934. Like the Wagner Act, it compels collective bargaining, empowers a majority of employers to elect their sole bargaining agency, provides machinery for mediation and adjustment. Accepted by most railroaders without legal quibble, it has helped make the railway industry a national model of pacific labor relations. But the same reason that it has rarely been challenged in court—the fact that railways are indisputably engaged in interstate commerce and hence subject to Congressional regulation—kept Supreme Court endorsement of it from being more than a shadowy clue to the Court's forthcoming decision on the Wagner Act. Well hedged by its qualifying clause was Mr. Justice Stone's remark: "The peaceable settlement of labor controversies, especially where they may seriously impair the ability of an interstate rail carrier to perform its service to the public, is a matter of public concern."