Mills Up; Men Down

In Kansas City last week the National Labor Relations Act, passed last summer to make employers bargain collectively with a majority of their employes, met its first constitutional test, went down to dusty defeat. Three Stouts, Charles, Warda and Alice, who own the Majestic Flour Mills at Aurora, Mo., appealed to U. S. District Judge Merrill E. Otis for an injunction against a Labor Relations complaint. A majority of the Stout employes had organized a union, and demanded higher wages. This demand was granted. Then the unionized majority demanded that only union members be employed, that no union member be discharged except for cause regardless of whether his services were needed. These demands the Stouts refused. After a shutdown, they reopened their mill, offered to rehire all onetime employes individually. The Labor Board's complaint cited the three Stouts for refusing to bow to the unionized majority in the mill, threatened them with a $5,000 fine, a year in jail, or both, for violations of the Labor Act.

With a sweeping gesture Judge Otis granted a temporary injunction, declared the whole act unconstitutional. Said he: "Under the commerce clause, insofar as we are here concerned with it, Congress has power to regulate one thing only, this is: commerce among the several States. ..

"Manufacturing is not commerce, nor any part of commerce. Nothing more firmly is established in constitutional law than that. . . .

"It is absurd to say that the refusal of the owner of a flour mill to bargain collectively with his employes directly affects commerce among the States. . . .

"The individual employe is dealt with by the act as an incompetent. The Government must protect him even from himself. He is the ward of the United States to be cared for by his guardian even as if he were a member of an uncivilized tribe of Indians or a recently emancipated slave."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.