Chapter 2

The effect of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Bailey case is to render null and of no effect all of these labor laws which either directly or indirectly resulted in compulsory slavery. In the Bailey case the Supreme Court held that although the State statute in terms appeared to punish fraud, the inevitable purpose is to punish for failure to perform contracts for labor, thus compelling such performances and it violates the thirteenth amendment to the constitution and is unconstitutional. And again the further principle was announced that a constitutional prohibition can not be transgressed indirectly by court or statutory presumption any more than by direct enactment. The Court said: "The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits the control by coercion of the personal services of one man for the benefit of another and that the Federal Penal Act is violated by any State resolution which seeks to compel the services of labor by making it a crime to fail and refuse to perform contract employment!" This decision rendered by Mr. Justice Hughes and dissented from by Mr. Justice Holmes, an ex-Union soldier, and Mr. Justice Lurton, an ex-Confederate soldier, goes as far as any decision in upholding the spirit and intent of the Thirteenth Amendment as any decision ever rendered by this, the highest Court of the nation. However, this interpretation goes no further than the moral and physical fact of compelling the service of labor. Slavery and involuntary servitude according to the construction of the Court consist only in compelling one to work against his will and does not relate to the thousand and one facts of the human life by which one man might, though free in theory, be made subservient to another man. For instance, this same Court decided, in a case brought up from Arkansas where a Negro had, through the conspiracy of a number of white men been prevented from pursuing his occupation as a lumberman in a lumber district of that State, that it had no jurisdiction in the premises; that the act involved did not raise a Federal question; that the Negro was not the ward of the nation but an equal citizen, one who had accepted the garb of citizenship and discarded the robe of wardship and thereby restricted himself to pursue the remedies for wrongs inflicted by individuals in State courts although it was argued to the court that to prevent a man either directly or indirectly from pursuing a calling or profession was as thoroughly to enslave him as to force him to labor against his will.

Transcriber's Notes:

The following misprints have been corrected: "evdence" corrected to "evidence" (page 7) "State" corrected to "States" (page 8) "insitution" corrected to "institution" (page 11)