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Show EIGHT-HOUR LAW HELD VALID BY SUPREME COURT, . i JUDGES IN SIX TO THREE VERDICT VER-DICT UPHOLD THE ADAMSON LAW AS CONSTITUTIONAL. In Its Decision, However, the Court Rules That Employees of Public' ; Service Corporations May Not Strike in Concert. Washington. By a vote of six to three, the Supreme court on March j 19 upheld the right of congress to j legislate along any lines designed to , meet a public emergency, when it up-! held the Adamson eight-hour law for railway employees. In its decision, however, the court made the most radical advance in its history when it ruled that the employees em-ployees of public service organizations have not the right to strike in concert. con-cert. "That right," declared Chief Justice White in enunciating what may yet be characterized as revolutionary law and lead directly to public ownership of public utilities, "Is necessarily surrendered sur-rendered when the men are engaged in public service. They are comparable compar-able to soldiers in the ranks, who, in the presence of enemies of their country, coun-try, may not desert." The decision was not really necessary neces-sary at this time, inasmuch as the railway strike situation had been ad-Justed ad-Justed in New York earlier in the day. Justices Pitney, Day and Vandevan-ter Vandevan-ter dissented from the majority and held that the law was a wage increase law and no proper regulation of commerce com-merce under the constitution. Justice McKenna, concurring with the majority, major-ity, held that it involved simply the fixing of hours of labor. Justice Pitney, for himself and Justice Jus-tice Vandevanter, delivered a dissenting dissent-ing opinion, in which he expressed concurrence in the view held by Jus tice Day that the Adamson law was unconstitutional, because congress, although al-though confessedly not in possession Df the information necessary for intelligent in-telligent and just treatment of the controversy between carriers and trainmen, arbitrarily imposed upon the carriers an enormous cost of an experimental increase in wages, without with-out providing for any compensation to be paid in case the investigation should determine the impropriety of the increase. The installation of the eight-hour Say for trainmen will, it is asserted affect more than 400,000 railway men directly. The new wage scale will cost the railroads of the country approximately ap-proximately $50,000,000' annually. The back pay from January 1 which the men will receive will .total in the neighborhood of twelve or thirteen million dollars. The court decision is regarded as a jreat victory for the railway employees em-ployees in their fight for an eight-hour fvork day, and there will be no strike. Under the agreement reached between be-tween the railroads and the men involved, in-volved, the men will get an eight-hour lay, and time and one-eighth for overtime over-time work. This was the only point m which the men yielded. They had jriginally demanded a basis of time ind one-half for overtime. |