The tendency of
the courts had been, in the majority of cases, jealously to exert their
great power in protecting those who least needed protection and hardly
to use their power at all in the interest of those who most needed
protection. Our desire was to make the Federal Government efficient as
an instrument for protecting the rights of labor within its province,
and therefore to secure and enforce judicial decisions which would
permit us to make this desire effective. Not only some of the Federal
judges, but some of the State courts invoked the Constitution in a
spirit of the narrowest legalistic obstruction to prevent the Government
from acting in defense of labor on inter-State railways. In effect,
these judges took the view that while Congress had complete power as
regards the goods transported by the railways, and could protect wealthy
or well-to-do owners of these goods, yet that it had no power to protect
the lives of the men engaged in transporting the goods. Such judges
freely issued injunctions to prevent the obstruction of traffic in
the interest of the property owners, but declared unconstitutional
the action of the Government in seeking to safeguard the men, and the
families of the men, without whose labor the traffic could not take
place.
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