JUDICIARY: Grubb for Belcher

At Birmingham, Ala. last week a Federal Judge ruled that NIRA was unconstitutional. Last August a Federal Grand Jury indicted W. E. Belcher, who owns saw mills at Centerville, Plantersville and other Alabama towns, for paying his men less than 24¢ an hour, for working them more than 40 hours a week. Mr. Belcher’s lawyer filed a demurrer. If Federal Judge William I. Grubb had decided against the defendant, U. S. v. Belcher would have been sidetracked into the District Court of Appeals for trial. But after a conference with lawyers for both sides, he put it on the main line to the Supreme Court by handing down an unwritten decision granting the demurrer on the grounds that Mr. Belcher was being deprived of his property without due process of law, that the Recovery Act unlawfully delegated judicial and legislative powers to the President, that the lumber business is an intrastate affair and therefore no Federal concern.