JUDICIARY: Horse Collars

The Supreme Court last week decided a legal case between Kentucky Whip and Collar Co. and Illinois Central Railroad. The company, which makes horse collars and harness with convict labor at Kentucky’s Eddyville penitentiary, was seeking legal authority to make the railroad accept 25 shipments of horse collars & harness which it had refused. But the issue at stake was far bigger than it looked. The railroad’s refusal was based on the Ashurst-Sumners Act, passed in 1935, forbidding the shipment of convict-made goods into states which forbid its sale.

Chief Justice Hughes read the Court’s unanimous verdict for the railroad. He said:

“. . . the Congress may prevent interstate transportation from being used to bring into a state articles the traffic in which the state has constitutional authority to forbid, and has forbidden, in its internal commerce. .

“The Congress in exercising the power confided to it by the Constitution is as free as the states to recognize the fundamental interests of free labor. . . .”

Just how important those words may prove, no man last week could say but they raised hopes in all those who want to revive NRA. For the Court had apparently given Congress carte blanche to forbid traffic in interstate commerce in any goods not produced under standards of minimum wages, maximum hours of labor, etc. etc., provided states can be induced to forbid the sale of such goods within their own borders.