13. Inability to compel by law payment of extra compensation for overtime.
14. Inability to prevent by law employer from holding back part of wages.
15. Inability to compel payment of wages in cash; so that employer may pay in truck or scrip not redeemable in lawful money.
16. Inability to forbid alien labor on municipal contracts.
17. Inability to secure by law union label on city printing."
Labor representatives speak of "the ironic manner in which the courts guarantee to workers: The right to be maimed and killed without liability to the employer; the right to be discharged for belonging to a union; the right to work as many hours as employers please and under any considerations which they may impose." The "irony" is, of course, not intended by the courts. It is the irony inherent in a situation when rules designed to secure justice become futile, if not a positive cause of injustice, because of changed conditions.
[230] In Greater New York. An acre on Manhattan Island is of course worth much more. The Report of the New York Tax Department for 1907 is very suggestive.