The Massachusetts court held that your law was constitutional; but our law, which did not go as far, the Court of Appeals of the State of New York held as unconstitutional, and there was this further gem in the language—the court said that there had been altogether too much legislation of this kind in the United States and the time had come for the court fearlessly to oppose the barrier of its judgment against it.
I love that word “fearlessly.” [Prolonged cheering.] Those amiable, well-meaning, excellently intentioned judges, who, doubtless, did not in their whole circle of acquaintances know one woman who was working in a factory or a sweatshop, said that they would stand “fearlessly” for what?
“Fearlessly” for the right of the big factory owner and the small sweatshop owner to earn their money by working women, haggard, hour after hour, day after day, night after night, in the factory and sweatshop.
Now, friends, do you know what my proposal is—this revolutionary proposal of mine [laughter], this proposal of mine that they say represents socialism and anarchy?
FOR THE 10,000,000.
My proposal is this: That in a case like that, the 10,000,000 people of the State of New York, to whom those 6 or 7 elderly, worthy, well-meaning men had said that they could not have justice—that those 10,000,000 people, after a time amply sufficient in which to come to a sober judgment, should be permitted to vote for themselves as to whether the Constitution, which they themselves had made, had been correctly interpreted by your court here in Massachusetts and the Court of Appeals in the State of New York. [Prolonged cheering.]
And if in a case like that the people are not intelligent enough to vote and say what they themselves meant when they made the Constitution, they are not intelligent enough to have made the Constitution in the first place. [Applause.]
THE COMPENSATION ACT.
One more case, only one more—two, perhaps. [Laughter.] We passed in New York a workmen’s compensation act.
The Supreme Court of the United States, interpreting exactly the same language in the Constitution of the United States as the court of appeals interpreted in the constitution of the State of New York, and in reference to a practically exactly similar bill, decided that that law was constitutional.