hold by prohibiting the transport of its goods in interstate commerce unless the conditions of their manufacture have conformed to prescribed standards. Much of the work of the Supreme Court has consisted of deciding on the constitutionality of Federal laws challenged by the States as an encroachment on their rights. To that standing difficulty was added the fact that in America, as elsewhere, problems arising out of the European War absorbed time and attention which both Cabinet and Congress would have desired to devote to domestic legislation. In spite of that the Wilson Administration has carried through a striking list of measures bearing on social and industrial questions. And in almost every case the President's share in their initiation or successful passage has been large. His relations with Labour have not been uniformly smooth. As is usual in times of industrial prosperity, there has been much industrial unrest, and one or two serious deadlocks, since Mr. Wilson's advent to power in 1913. The great textile strike, organized at Lawrence, in Massachusetts, by the Industrial Workers of the World (the unskilled labourers' federation), fell in his predecessor's term of office; but soon after his election there was a serious difficulty among the weavers at Paterson, in the President's own State of New Jersey, and in 1914 a grave outbreak took place at the Standard Oil Company's mines in Colorado. The issue was the recognition of union officials and the employment of non-union labour, and after a serious affray between the strikers and the State militia, Mr. Wilson was compelled to draft Federal troops into the State. The dispute was finally settled by a Commission of Investigation, appointed by the President, when all other attempts at a settlement had failed. There was fortunately no other disturbance of the magnitude of the Colorado outbreak, though the railway troubles of 1916 threatened to put that and every other industrial conflict of recent times in the shade. Meanwhile President Wilson had been proving the sincerity of his promises of social legislation. Of the three great measures passed during his first year of office all had an indirect bearing on the welfare of Labour. The Federal Reserve Act by distributing credit stabilized trade, and therefore employment ; the Underwood Tariff Act lowered the price of staple commodities, like sugar, to the poor; and the Clayton Anti-Trust Act in certain important particulars constituted a charter for Labour comparable to the Trade Disputes Act in Great Britain. The Clayton Act, which owed its passage into law to the pressure exerted personally by the President at a critical stage, expressly exempted labour unions from the veto on "combinations in restraint of trade." The unions had suffered much from the rulings of the courts. The Sherman Anti-Trust Law, of 1890, had not been aimed at Labour; but decisions of the Supreme Court in 1908 and 1911 had brought trade unions definitely under it. The clauses in the Clayton Act, legalizing peaceful strikes and boy cotts, were the response to urgent demands of Labour for relief from the impossible position in which the Sherman Act had placed it. The same measure severely limited the power of the courts to restrict the action of unions by injunctions prohibiting the continuance of practices forming the subject of an impending action. It was not without reason that Mr. Wilson sent the pen with which he signed the Act as a memento to Mr. Samuel Gompers, the President of the American Federation of Labour. smooth The Labour legislation rarely enjoys a passage. It almost invariably produces a clash of interests, and long after the law has been enacted and put in force opinion will still remain sharply divided as to its value. That was particularly true of two measures passed by the Sixty-third and Sixty-fourth Congresses, the Seamen's Act and the Adamson Railway Act. Adamson Act must be considered later. Seamen's Act, introduced by Senator La Follette, one of the founders of the Progressive Party, was dictated partly by alarm at the Titanic disaster, and partly by the demand of the seamen's unions for better conditions of service. The effect of the Act was to establish the sailor's right to at least half wages within forty-eight hours of making an American port, and to abolish arrests for desertion ; while it was laid down at the same time that after a specified interval 65 per cent. of the deck hands of any vessel calling at an American port must be able seamen, and 75 per cent. of the crew must be able to under stand any order in the language in which it is given. The Bill, which involved the denunciation of treaties with more than twenty nations, was strongly opposed by the Republicans, and it was fully expected that the President would veto it, in view of the opposition at home and the irritation abroad. He decided, however, that the case was not one for opposing the decision of Congress. The passage of the Act was loudly applauded by the Seamen's Union. The hostility of foreign Governments to the measure would no doubt have been more vigorously expressed if the war had not intervened to thrust lesser concerns into the background. Two much less contentious measures, which owed their passage directly to the President's interest in their fortunes, were the Rural Credits Act and the Federal Child Labour Act. The Rural Credits Act, the purpose of which is sufficiently explained by its title, was the fulfilment of an old debt to the farmers. It had had a place in the Democratic platform of 1912, and Mr. Wilson had given it his strong personal support. The measure, more often known as the Federal Farm Loan Act, created a Federal Farm Loan Board and provided for the establishment of Federal Land Banks in twelve centres throughout the Union. The machinery bears a close resemblance to that of the Federal Reserve Board, which had already done something to facilitate agricultural development. The Act, as President Wilson reminded the farmers in whose presence he set his signature to it, made the credit of the United States available to them and gave them the same facilities for raising loans as were always open to any city manufacturer and merchant with genuine assets to pledge. The Child Labour Act was the first measure of the kind passed by Congress. Social reforms such as it embodied had in the past been left to the individual States, and the power of the Federal Government to legislate for the whole Union on such a question was a matter of controversy. As it is, the constitutionality of the Child Labour Act is certain to be challenged before the Supreme Court. The provisions of the Act are simple. It prohibits the shipment in inter-state commerce of goods emanating from factories employing children under fourteen, or under sixteen if employed at night or for more than eight hours a day. The measure had no easy passage. The first time it was introduced it was allowed to lapse. Brought in again in the following session, it would have met with no better fate but for Mr. Wilson's determination that it should be saved. At the critical stage, when the approaching end of the session threatened a general disaster to all outstanding Bills, the President sent for the party leaders and urged them to insist on the passage of the Child Labour Act. His appeal was successful. The Senate passed the measure by 52 votes to 12, and it was signed on September 1, 1916. It was to come into operation twelve months later. It was left to the threatened railway strike of 1916 to involve Mr. Wilson in the most decisive |