It should be the business of the Government to enforce laws of
this kind, and to appear in court to argue for their constitutionality
and proper enforcement. Thanks to Moody, the Government assumed this
position. The first employers' liability law affecting inter-State
railroads was declared unconstitutional. We got through another, which
stood the test of the courts.
The principle to which we especially strove to give expression, through
these laws and through executive action, was that a right is valueless
unless reduced from the abstract to the concrete. This sounds like a
truism. So far from being such, the effort practically to apply it was
almost revolutionary, and gave rise to the bitterest denunciation of us
by all the big lawyers, and all the big newspaper editors, who, whether
sincerely or for hire, gave expression to the views of the privileged
classes. Ever since the Civil War very many of the decisions of the
courts, not as regards ordinary actions between man and man, but as
regards the application of great governmental policies for social
and industrial justice, had been in reality nothing but ingenious
justification of the theory that these policies were mere high-sounding
abstractions, and were not to be given practical effect.
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