save its own. This was powerfully emphasized by Mr. Justice Brewer In re Debs (158 U. S., 540) when he said:

It is curious to note the fact that in the larger proportion of the cases in respect to Interstate Commerce brought to this court, the question presented involves the validity of State legislation in its bearings upon interstate commerce, and the uniform course of decision has been to declare that it is not within the competency of the State to legislate in such a manner as to obstruct interstate commerce. If the State, with its recognized powers of sovereignty, is impotent to obstruct interstate commerce, can it be that any mere voluntary association of individuals within the limits of that State has the power which the State itself does not possess?

I submit that Congress possesses a power to condition action in combination that it could not exercise with respect to the individual since by its nature combination is subject to a different rule of law and policy. This Government was primarily conceived to protect individual rights and the public interest, and to Congress is given the exclusive and plenary power to protect that right and interest in intercourse between the States. Of course, no individual can exercise the right to strike, for it is a mere miscarriage of language to refer to quitting by one person as a strike, but even so far as the individual himself is concerned I think Congress could go very far in conditioning his right to quit the service of an interstate carrier and, needless to say, what could be said of the conditioning of individual action will apply in much greater degree to the conditioning of any action of combination. Is there any doubt in the mind of any member of this committee that Congress can condition the right to combine to quit the service of a carrier in order to protect the interruption of that essential service and not to protect the management but the public?

Of course, the right to prohibit the right to combine to quit for a time may include the right to prohibit the right to combine to quit altogether, although there would be a distinction involved in such a question as to the reasonable use of power as opposed to its arbitrary exercise, for arbitrary power finds no sanction in our institutions.

I think Congress could go very far in conditioning the individual contract of service for those engaged in the operation of an interstate carrier, and whatever may be said with respect to the power of Congress in that particular can surely be said for a greater reason with respect to the power of Congress to condition the exercise of the right of combined action among the operatives or managers of instrumentalities of interstate commerce. To illustrate, is there any doubt in the mind of any member of this committee that Congress, to insure the safety of passengers and freight moving by rail between the States, could make it a penal offense for an individual employee of such a carrier to quit within a certain limit of time or without due notice, if, by so quitting, he jeopardized the life of passengers or the safety of property committed to the custody of the carrier? Can you doubt that Congress could say to the towerman directing the movement of many trains over many tracks, or the switchman or engineer, upon the performance of whose duty the life of passengers depends, should not quit without some intervening notice or without taking his train to its destination, or, at least, without delivering it to a terminal? Do you doubt that as a regulation of commerce Congress could punish such quitting as a crime? Of

course it could not affirmatively force his service, but could it not compel by a penalty a reasonable respect for the circumstances of his employment? For every man who voluntarily undertakes employment with an interstate carrier, as manager or operative, possesses duties as well as rights. He can not escape the obligations which attach to his employment by its very nature. I have no doubt that the State, in the exercise of its police power, as Congress, in the exercise of its commerce power, could compel a reasonable recognition of the obligations of employment where sudden quitting endangered the life of persons who, by the circumstances of his job, depended for their safety upon the reasonable performance of some step in a task before the employee quit. The circumstances of all our social life make us each at times dependent for our safety upon the completion of some act by another, and we have all become utterly dependent upon the maintenance of that motion which constitutes commerce and upon which we are abjectly dependent for the transaction of the business of life.

Now, if Congress declared that the concerted quitting of employment by the operatives of an interstate carrier pending an investigation of a dispute between them and their employers was unlawful, what is the nature of the step which Congress has taken? It has in no way affected the right of the individual to sever the contract relation. It has not prohibited, but it has merely conditioned the right to combine to quit. I submit that every one of the many cases presented in the inferior and supreme courts of the United States vindicating the power of Congress under the Sherman Act to condition, qualify, and prohibit all right of combination in interstate commerce speaks with an emphatic voice in favor of the authority of Congress to condition a combination of employees to quit the service of interstate carriers as a means of securing some demand from their employers. Whether Congress conduct the inquiry for which it provided, through the Interstate Commerce Commission, or made it an added power of the Commissioners of Conciliation or Mediation, or provided in each case a separate commission of inquiry is merely a matter of policy or expediency. But, as to the power of Congress, certainly every case from Gibbons v. Ogden to the last utterance of the Supreme Court on the subject, and especially those numerous cases which arose during the railroad strike of 1894, state in the broadest terms the supreme plenary exclusive power of Congess to prevent or remove any obstruction to the movement of commerce, whether it be physical or economic, a mob, a sand bank, or a monopoly, a group of employers or a group of employees. Surely, if the regulation of a sovereign State is swept from the pathway of commerce, Congress, in the language of Justice Brewer, can prevent “any mere voluntary association" from paralyzing that commerce as a means of enforcing or bettering its contract of service.

In dealing with this very power you have recently gone so far as to say that Congress may say to the manufacturer in any State: Unless you make your local contract of employment within certain inhibitions you shall not ship your product in interstate commerce, for in the protection of that commerce we shall exclude from it any commodity, however Found in itself, which has been produced under local conditions we believe affect public health or public morals.

Personally I can not doubt that you possess the power to either exclude or condition the right to combine in interstate commerce when the purpose and necessary effect or one of the methods of such combination contemplates the suspension, obstruction, or prevention of the operation of a necessary instrumentality of commerce. Whether you shall exercise that power to the limit by prohibiting combination or whether you shall partially exercise it by conditioning its activity is a matter for your discretion. But I have no doubt, Mr. Chairman, that you could not compel any individual to remain at work against his will, except for such reasonable period as was necessary to compel some task the quitting of which endangered life. In the exercise of that power, with respect of an individual, the sole question would be whether or not the regulation of individual liberty was a reasonable exercise of power in the protection of a legitimate public interest, and such an exercise of power would be easily distinguishable from any effort to compel involuntary servitude. All the "peonage" cases to which reference has been made here arose under statutes in which a man was involuntarily compelled to work out a debt, and in such cases the statute was so shaped as to involuntarily urge him into debt as well as to compel him to involuntarily work it out. The inhibition placed by the thirteenth amendment does not run against reasonable restraint of private conduct in the public interest, but forbids involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Emery, you have exceeded your time limit. I presume whatever you would say further would be simply an elaboration of what you have stated, and you can put quotations of these decisions in the record, if you choose.

Mr. EMERY. Very well, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Easley, it is necessary for you to go out of town to-day? I wish to give you the floor, Mr. Furuseth. Mr. FURUSETH. I shall defer to Mr. Easley.

Senator CUMMINS. Before you proceed with Mr. Easley, I would like to say that if it is convenient to Mr. Emery, at some future time may want to ask him a question or two. I do not want to arrest the proceedings now, because I know Mr. Easley wants to leave town.

I

Mr. EMERY. I will be glad to be here at any time you suggest.

Senator CUMMINS. It may be that I will want to get some further information from you.

Mr. EMERY. With your permission, then, Mr. Chairman, I shall briefly sum up. I have undertaken to suggest that the proposal of the President applies only to the right to act in combination and not to individual conduct. That it is an extraordinary remedy for an extraordinary situation, and proposes only that when a labor dispute between the employees and managers of an interstate carrier has failed of settlement through mediation and conciliation, and arbitra · tion is refused, it shall be unlawful for either party to the controversy to strike or lockout until an inquiry has been made into the merits of the controversy through a commission authorized for that purpose. I submit that the effect of this proposal is to condition, not to prohibit, the right to combine to quit, and that the purpose for

which such power is exercised is one well within the powers of Congress, to prevent the use of the power of combination to obstruct or prevent the interruption of the service of an interstate carrier as a means of securing the enforcement or betterment of a contract of service.

I submit that it is the duty as well as within the power of Congress to protect the country against an interruption of interstate service, upon which its social life is utterly dependent, through the act of a combination. That in the course of 26 years of congressional legislation dealing with combinations operating in commerce between the States Congress has asserted and has been sustained in the right to condition, exclude, and penalize all forms of combination threatening the safety, the freedom, and the free flow of every form of commercial intercourse between the States.

I submit, finally, that Congress can suffer no division of its power to regulate commerce with any other authority, whether it be a sovereign State or an irresponsible voluntary association. Yet it is evident that when Debs undertook to prevent 27 railroads from hauling Pullman cars, or when the brotherhood in the Ann Arbor cases undertook to prevent the railroads upon which they were employed from handling the cars of a carrier with which their members were on strike, that these combinations undertook to fix the rule of interstate commerce for the objects of their attack. Had they succeeded in their effort, the commerce which they permitted would have been conducted under the law which they established and not the rule which Congress made. The issue here is not merely whether Congress can condition the operation of a combination the necessary effect and purpose of whose activity is the paralyzing of the service of an interstate carrier, but whether Congress, not merely as a matter of right but of duty, can tolerate the organization and maintenance of any combination which can at its will, as a first or as an ultimate argument for the acceptance of its demands, possesses the power and asserts the right to starve a Nation into becoming the unconscious partners to its demand by stopping the instrumentalities of social intercourse until that demand, whether just or unjust, is granted. The final issue is whether or not Congress possesses and should exercise the ultimate power of social self-defense in the domain of interstate

commerce.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Easley, you may now proceed.

STATEMENT OF MR. RALPH M. EASLEY, CHAIRMAN OF THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION.

Mr. EASLEY. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, my name is Ralph M. Easely, chairman of the executive council of the National Civic Federation.

I am not appearing, officially speaking, for the National Civic Federation. I will read just one paragraph at the close of my statement here which will explain that better. In what I am saying I am only voicing my own sentiments. The National Civic Federation has not officially passed upon the question, although in earlier days the officers of the organization, from Mr. Low down, were all opposed to either compusory arbitration or compulsory investigation. This statement, Mr. Chairman, was not prepared to read before

this committee, but as a part of an address I am to make next week in New York, but I am only dealing with the operation of the Canadian act as I find it in their own reports.

In the present controversy over the Canadian compulsory investigation act, which act Congress is considering as a means, to quote its advocates, for preventing a recurrence of a threatened railway tie-up in this country, there are several very important points generally overlooked.

First, and most important, it will not prevent a recurrence at all; it was not intended to prohibit strikes, and it does not prevent them in Canada. It is only intended to delay them until after a board has heard both sides of the issue and made a public recommendation. Then either side or both sides, which has happened in Canada time and again, can go ahead and fight it out. This fact can be easily ascertained by examining the recent report of the conciliation board of the labor department of Canada, which purports to give the history of every case that has come before the board since the enactment of the law growing out of disputes in the railway, municipal utility, and mining interests of Canada, and their employees, mining being classed as a public utility in the law.

However strongly one may feel that the paramountcy of the public right and interest in an uninterrupted service of public utilities should be maintained at all hazards, however strongly one may feel that the railway brotherhoods, in threatening to paralyze the traffic of the country, were wrong and deserve drastic legislative treatment, as it has been said, to teach them that the public has right as well as they, there is no use in fooling ourselves about "securing a prevention of a railroad strike" in this country by adopting the Canadian act. Personally, I feel that the railway brotherhoods should have accepted the proposals of the railway managers for arbitration, notwithstanding their great disappointments in previous arbitration, and notwithstanding the acknowledged serious defects inherent in all arbitration where the public representatives on the board have the deciding voice. Also, I believe in the paramountcy of the public interests; but that has no bearing on the question as to whether the Canadian compulsory investigation act is the vehicle through which the public voice can be made effective. It is not a question of sentiment, but a question of fact.

A proposition that might work well in Canada with its almost homogeneous population of 7,206,643 does not throw much light on what will work in a country of 100,000,000 population composed of over 40 nationalities. When we consider that Greater New York and vicinity has a larger population than the whole Dominion of Canada, comparing problems in Canada to those in the United States seems a little grotesque.

Parenthetically it might be recalled that some years ago we were flooded with wonderful ideas of the successful operation of the novel. and so-called progressive legislation in New Zealand, and the Socialists, single taxers, and other radicals in the country started at once a movement to "New Zealandize" the United States. Well, these beautiful dreams, even in little New Zealand, which is only one-sixth as large as Canada, and whose population is even more homogeneous, there being only 823 aliens, have been smashed to