In the early twentieth century, one of the major topics within the realm of American politics was that of determining the official rights of workers and their mobility within a particular corporation. Since the time of the Gilded Age and the birth of American industry, the United States had begun to develop at a level never witnessed before in previous historical accounts. It was with this greater rate of acceleration that there grew to be a greater demand of industrial workers to fulfill wealthy business tycoons' interests of achieving economic prosperity and manufacturing industrial goods to supply the greater good of society. The condition of the majority of workers during this time were deplorable, and most industrial workers were denied basic rights that we as Americans take for granted in present time, these being an eight-hour workday and minimum wages for employees. Despite episodes like the Pullman Strike of 1894, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the Haymarket Square riot of 1886, the voices of the workers were ignored and replaced with new immigrant workers and those willing to stomach such harsh labor conditions, thus placing the strikers in a position of poverty. However, towards the end of the nineteenth century, more state legislatures were working to pass legislation that ensured worker's safety and limitations on potential of labor, appearing that that the freedoms of American citizens would grow once again. However, when measures like the New York Bakeshop Act was passed, controversy over doing so reached the bench of the Supreme Court on numerous occasions, one of the most famous and defining moments being in the case of Lochner v. New York in 1905.
Like most Supreme Court cases referenced in American history, the significance of the scenario is not as much the scenario itself, rather how such an event could allow the court to rethink the particular set of rights Americans are endowed with their citizenship and how it affects each individual on a personal level. The reason the case Lochner v. New York was brought to the attention of the Supreme Court was the result of a bakery store owner by the name of Joseph Lochner allowing his employees to work more than eight hours in an individual day. This fell into direct violation with the recently-ratified New York Bakeshop Act of 1895 in which no employee could work more than ten hours per day. Such a rule was a result from analyzing the unsafe and potentially hazardous to a workman's health, and remaining more than ten hours in such an environment could mean a curtailed life for the baker. Lochner was then fined a substantial sum of money as punishment for his infringement of the law. So, given the facts of the case, what was the ultimate ruling of the court?
The Supreme Court at the start of the twentieth century was composed primarily of pro-industrialist justices, including the incredibly pro-laissez-faire sector known as the Four Horsemen. Possessing an initial bias toward a case would mean a quicker resolution and briefing, but would that briefing satisfy the desires of the American workforce? In the end, the court ruled in favor of Lochner and declared him innocent after expressing that the New York Bakeshop Act was unconstitutional. The grounds for Lochner's innocence were based on the wording of the Fourteenth Amendment, to which all Americans were provided "liberty of contract" and the Due Process Clause within the Fourteenth Amendment, the central keystones of explaining the Lochner debate. The reached conclusion that workers could work for any unrestricted amount of time without any laws hindering their potential of more labor. Lochner's case was eventually followed by cases like Adkins v. Children's Hospital where a Washington D.C. minimum wage law was also rejected by the court on the grounds of each worker having the ability to negotiate a wage for themselves and performing tasks that generate substantial funding to function in society. The Fourteenth Amendment and its individual clauses were mentioned in every labor case brought to the Supreme Court between 1905 and 1937, and although the court's responses were intended to improve the conditions of the people, they in fact made labor much more difficult and precarious. When the mindset of the Lochner case ruled over the Court, the era of politicking became known as the thirty-two year long "Lochner era" with which the pro-capitalist court ruled in favor of business once again at the expense of the worker. Lochnerism did not witness its end until the case of West Coast Hotel v. Parrish when the court validated a Washington state minimum wage law as protecting the individual and ensuring stability within his or her own life. Laborer's rights were once and for all confirmed, and to this day, the court has maintained the mindset of the West Coast Hotel v. Parrish case in deciding on behalf of the well being of the worker and remaining concerned with social ills plaguing citizens from thriving.
Works Cited:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/capitalism/landmark_lochner.html
https://www.britannica.com/event/Lochner-v-New-York#ref1182114
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/198us45
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