They lived in squalid filth, with the great sheets of tobacco in the bed clothing, under the beds, mixed up with stale food, put in the corners of the dirty room.
We got a bill through to put a stop to that kind of work, and the court of appeals declared it unconstitutional. Friends, there was this gem in the opinion.
The court said that it could not permit the legislature to interfere with the sanctity of home. [Laughter. A voice: “No home at all.”]
TAKES WORLD OF TIME.
It was not home at all, as you say, that squalid 16-foot room where those families lived day in and day out and worked day in and day out; and yet the court forbade us to try and improve those conditions, to try and make the conditions of tenement-house life so that it would be possible for decent men and decent women to live decently there and bring up their children as American citizens should be brought up.
Friends, it is idle for any man to ask me to sit unmoved and without protest when a court makes a decision like that [cries of “Good” and applause], and it is a waste of time to tell me, as Mr. Taft did in his speech, that I am laying an impious hand on the ark of the covenant when I try to secure the reversal of such a decision. [Laughter and applause.]
Now wait. I have only just begun. [Applause.] I am sorry for you, but I will get through as quick as I can. [Voices: “Go on, go on.”]
THE LAW THAT WAS PASSED.
Then we passed a law providing that in factories there should be safeguards over all the dangerous machinery, and a girl working in a factory had her arm taken off above the elbow by an unprotected flywheel. She sued and recovered damages, and the court of appeals of the State of New York threw out her case, and there was another gem in their opinion. They said that they would not permit the legislature to interfere with the liberty of that girl to work amidst dangerous machinery. [Laughter.]
Now you can see yourselves—you can look up. I will refer anyone who wants to look it up to the exact decisions where this language occurred.