Show ROOSEVELT IS RIGHT Theodore Roosevelt has completely routed Judge Baldwin Baldin in their controversy on a point of law and exact justice although Bald Baldwin Baldwin Baldwin win is trained in the law and Roosevelt is not Roosevelt in answer to toa a letter from Judge Baldwin gives ex expression expression expression to views which should have the widest possible publicity as being progressive reasonable and just He says In the tho Hoxie case casc you had before you a definite statute enact enacted ed by the congress of the United States declaring the tie responsibility of railroads to their for negligence Section 5 6 of that act provided That any contract rule regulation or device whatsoever the purpose or intent of which shall shan be to enable any common carrier car carrier carrier rier to exempt itself from any liability created by this act shall to that extent be void lIn In that act congress declared that every should have certain new legal rights of compensation for injuries occasioned by the negligence of the railroad itself In placing this clause which I have the act congress was no doubt influenced by the well known fact that in England an employers liability act enacted many years a ago afO o was made m a dead letter by employers insisting that their i I should sign contracts agreeing to waive the benefits of the statute and go without the legal rights which the statute proposed to give them In tho the case decided by you which I have criticised you de declared declared dared that this clause was unconstitutional as being in violation of the fifth amendment to the constitution of the United States as tend ing to deprive the parties to such a contract of liberty and property without the process of law lav You say specifically as to railway em it denies them one and all the liberty of contract which the United States secures to every person within its jurisdiction Your declaration speaks for itself In substance it amounts to I stating that the right to give up their rights under the law is a thing to be protected and not their right to receive those bene beneI fits that the right to contract Contra ct to get killed is property of which they I cannot be deprived that the right to get killed comes under the head of life liberty and property which the fifth amendment to the United States constitution says cannot be taken without due process of law Congress aimed at giving the railroad a substance You construed the act as giving him a shadow by solemnly declaring d laring that to give him the substance b is to take away his property in the shadow The result which you attempted to accomplish in this decision would produce I am told a strange anomaly The United States supreme court has held that public policy would o d not permit a railroad company to make matte contracts with shippers of freight that the railroad company shall not be responsible for its own negligence in trans porting that freight You say that the railroad cannot be forbidden to contract with its that it shall not be responsible for maiming or killing them by negligence I protest that there is no public policy which makes freight more important than human lives and I criticised your decision bo boo cause you say that tho the constitution would not permit protection of the lives of every to the same extent to which without a statute freight is in the tho United States protected now |