Wolff Packing Company vs. Kansas Court Of Industrial Relations- 1923

Wolff Packing Company vs. Kansas Court Of Industrial Relations- 1923

Writ of Error to Supreme Court of Kansas.
TAFT, C. J. This case involves the validity of the Court of Industrial Relations Act of Kansas (1920). The act declares the following to be affected with a public interest: First, manufacture and preparation of food for human consumption; . . . fifth, public utilities and common carriers. The act vests an industrial court of three judges with power, upon its own initiative or on complaint, to summon the parties and hear any dispute over wages or other terms of employment in any such industry, and if it shall find the peace and health of the public imperiled by such controversy, it is required to make findings and fix the wages and other terms for the future conduct of the industry....
The Charles Wolff Packing Co., the plaintiff in error, is a corporation of Kansas engaged in slaughtering hogs and cattle and preparing the meat for sale and shipment....
In January, 1921, the president and secretary of the Meat Cutters Union filed a complaint with the Industrial Court against the Packing Company, respecting the wages its employees were receiving The Company appeared and answered and a hearing was had. The Court made findings, including one of an emergency, and an order as to wages, increasing them over the figures to which the company had recently reduced them. The Company refused to comply with the order, and the Industrial Court then instituted mandamus proceedings in the Supreme Court to compel compliance.... The Industrial Court conceded that the Wolff Company could not operate on the schedule fixed without a loss, but relied on the statement by its president that he hoped for more prosperous times.
The Packing Company brings this case here on the ground that the validity of the Industrial Court Act was upheld, although as in conflict with the provision of the 14th Amendment that no State shall deprive any person of liberty or property without due process of law....
The necessary postulate of the Industrial Court Act is that the state, representing the people, is so much interested in their peace, health, and comfort, that it may compel those engaged in the manufacture of food and clothing, and the production of fuel, whether owners or workers, to continue in their business and employment on terms fixed by an agency of the state, if they cannot agree. Under the construction adopted by the state supreme court, the act gives the Industrial Court authority to permit the owner or employer to go out of the business if he shows that he can only continue on the terms fixed at such heavy loss that collapse will follow; but this privilege, under the circumstances. is generally illusory. A laborer dissatisfied with his wages is permitted to quit, but he may not agree with his fellows to quit, or combine with others to induce them to quit.
These qualifications do not change the essence of the act. It curtails the right of the employer, on the one hand, and that of the employee, on the other, to contract about his affairs. This is part of the liberty of the individual protected by the guaranty of the due process clause of the 14th Amendment....
It is manifest from an examination of the cases cited . . that the mere declaration by a legislature that a business is affected with a public interest is not conclusive of the question whether its attempted regulation on that ground is justified. The circumstances of its alleged change from the status of a private business and its freedom from regulation into one in which the public have come to have an interest, are always a subject of judicial inquiry....
It has never been supposed, since the adoption of the Constitution, that the business of the butcher, or the baker, the tailor, the woodchopper, the mining operator, or the miner, was clothed with such a public interest that the price of his product or his wages could be fixed by state regulation....
To say that a business is clothed with a public interest is not to determine what regulation is permissible in view of the private rights of the owner. The extent to which an
inn or cab system may be regulated may differ widely from that allowable as to a railroad or other common carrier. It is not a matter of legislative discretion solely. It depends upon the nature of the business, on the feature which touches the public, and on the abuses reasonably to be feared. To say that business is clothed with a public interest is not to import that the public may take over its entire management and run it at the expense of the owner. The extent to which regulation may reasonably go varies with different kinds of business The regulation of rates to avoid monopoly, is one thing. The regulation of wages is another. A business may be of such character that only the first is permissible, while another may involve such a possible danger of monopoly on the one hand, and such disaster from stoppage on the other, that both come within the public concern and power of regulation.
If, as, in effect, contended by counsel for the state, the common callings are clothed with a public interest by a mere legislative declaration, which necessarily authorizes full and comprehensive regulation within legislative discretion there must be a revolution in the relation of government to general business. This will be running the public-interest argument into the ground.... It will be impossible to reconcile such result with the freedom of contract and of labor secured by the
14th Amendment.
This brings to the nature and purpose of the regulation under the Industrial Court Act. The avowed object is continuity of food, clothing, and fuel supply. By sec. 6 reasonable continuity and efficiency of the industries
specified are declared to be necessary for the public peace, health, and general welfare, and all are forbidden to hinder, limit, or suspend them. Sec. 7 gives the Industrial Court power, in case of controversy between employers and workers which may endanger the continuity or efficiency of service, to bring the employer and employee before it, and after hearing and investigation, to fix the terms and conditions between them. The employer is bound by this act to pay the wages fixed; and while the worker is not required to work at the wages fixed, he is forbidden on penalty of fine or imprisonment, to strike against them, and thus is compelled to give up that means of putting himself on an equality with his employer which action in concert with his fellows gives him....
The minutely detailed government supervision, including that of their relations to their employees, to which the railroads of the country have been gradually subjected by Congress through its power over interstate commerce, furnishes no precedent for regulation of the business of the plaintiff, whose classification as public is, at the best, doubtful. It is not too much to say that the ruling in Wilson v. New went to the borderline, although it concerned an interstate common carrier in the presence of a nation-wide emergency and the possibility of great disaster. Certainly there is nothing to justify extending the drastic regulation sustained in that exceptional case to the one before Us.
We think that Industrial Court Act . . . in conflict with the 14th Amendment. Judgement reversed.

CHAPTER I
ART. I. The Contracting Powers agree to limit their respective naval armament as provided in the present Treaty.
ART. II. The Contracting Powers may retain respectively the capital ships which are specified in Chapter II, Part 1. On the coming into force of the present Treaty, but subject to the following provisions of this Article, all other capital ships, built or building, of the United States, the British Empire and Japan shall be disposed of as prescribed in Chapter II, Part 2.
In addition to the capital ships specified in Chapter II, Part 1, the United States may complete and retain two ships of the West Virginia class now under construction. On the completion of these two ships the North Dakota and Delaware shall be disposed of as prescribed in Chapter II, Part 2.
The British Empire may, in accordance with the replacement table in Chapter II, Part 3, construct two new capital ships not exceeding 35,000 tons (35,560 metric tons) standard displacement each. On the completion of the said two ships the Thunderer, King George V, Ajax and Centurion shall be disposed of as prescribed in Chapter II, Part 2.
ART. III. Subject to the provisions of
Article II, the Contracting Powers shall abandon their respective capital ship building programs, and no new capital ships shall be constructed or acquired by any of the Contracting Powers except replacement tonnage which may be constructed or acquired as specified in Chapter II, Part 3.
Ships which are replaced in accordance with chapter II, Part 3, shall be disposed of as prescribed in Part 2 of that Chapter.
ART. IV. The total capital ship replacement tonnage of the Contracting Powers shall not exceed in standard displacement, for the United States 525,000 tons (533,400 metric tons); for the British Empire 525,000 tons (533,400 metric tons); for France 175,000 tons (177,800 metric tons); for Italy 175,000 tons (177,800 metric tons); for Japan 315,000 tons (320,040 metric tons).
ART. V. No capital ship exceeding 35,000 tons (35,560 metric tons) standard displacement shall be acquired by, or constructed by, for, or within the jurisdiction of, any of the Contracting Powers.
ART. VI. No capital ship of any of the Contracting Powers shall carry a gun with a calibre in excess of 16 inches (405 millimeters) .
ART. VII. The total tonnage for aircraft carriers of each of the Contracting Powers shall not exceed in standard displacement, for the United States 135,000 tons (137,160 metric tons); for the British Empire 135,000 tons (137,160metric tons); for France 60,000 tons (60,960 metric tons); for Italy 60,000 tons (60,C960 metric tons); for Japan 81,00
tons (82,296 metric tons)....
ART. IX. No aircraft carrier exceeding 27, 000 tons (27,432 metric tons) standard displacement shall be acquired by, or constructed by, for or within the jurisdiction of, any of the contracting Powers....
ART. XI. No vessel of war exceeding 10,000 tons (10,160 metric tons) standard displacement, other than a capital ship or aircraft carrier, shall be acquired by, or constructed by, for, or within the jurisdiction of, any of the Contracting Powers. Vessels not specifically built as fighting ships nor taken in time of peace under government control for fighting purposes, which are employed on fleet duties or as troop transports or in some other way for the purpose of assisting in the prosecution of hostilities otherwise than as
fighting ships, shall not be within the limitations of this Article.
ART. XII. No vessel of war of any of the Contracting Powers, hereafter laid down, other than a capital ship, shall carry a gun with a calibre in excess of 8 inches (203 millimeters).
ART. XIII. Except as provided in Article IX, no ship designated in the present Treaty to be scrapped may be reconverted into a vessel of war.
ART. XIV. No preparations shall be made in merchant ships in time of peace for the installation of warlike armaments for the purpose of converting such ships into vessels of war, . . .
ART. XIX. The United States, the British Empire and Japan agree that the status quo at the time of the signing of the present Treaty, with regard to fortifications and naval bases, shall be maintained in their respective territories and possessions specified hereunder:
(1) The insular possessions which the United States now holds or may hereafter acquire in the Pacific Ocean, except (a) those adjacent to the coast of the United States, Alaska and Panama Canal Zone, not including the Aleutian Islands, and (b) the Hawaiian Islands;
(2) Hong Kong and the insular possessions which the British Empire now holds or may hereafter acquire in the Pacific Ocean, east of the meridian of 110° east longitude, except (ad those adjacent to the coast of Canada, (b) the Commonwealth of Australia and id Territories, and (c) New Zealand;
(3) The following insular territories and possessions of Japan in the Pacific Ocean, to wit: the Kurile Islands, the Bonin Islands Amami-Oshima, the Loochoo Islands, Formosa and the Pescadores, and any insular territories or possessions in the Pacific Ocean which Japan may hereafter acquire.
The maintenance of the status quo under the foregoing provisions implies that no new fortifications or naval bases shall be established in the territories and possessions specified; that no measures shall be taken to increase the existing naval facilities for the repair and maintenance of naval forces, and that no increase shall be made in the coast defences of the territories and possessions above specified. This restriction, however,
does not preclude such repair and replacement of worn-out weapons and equipment as is customary in naval and military establishments in time of peace....
CHAPTER II
PART 1.

CAPITAL
SHIPS WHICH MAY
BE RETAINED BY TIIE
CONTRACTING
POWERS
[Lists]
PART 2.

RULES FOR SCRAPPING VESSELS OF WAR.

The following rules shall be observed for the strapping of vessels of war which are to be disposed of in accordance with Articles II and 111
1. A vessel to be scrapped must be placed in such condition that it cannot be put to combatant use.
II. This result must be finally effected in any one of the following ways:
(a) Permanent sinking of the vessel; (b) Breaking the vessel up.
This shall always involve the destruction or removal of all machinery, boilers and armour, and all deck, side and bottom plating;
(c) Converting the vessel to target use exclusively.... Not more than one capital ship may be retained for this purpose at one time by any of the Contract:ng Powers....
PART 3. SEC. I.

RULES FOR REPLACEMENT.

(a) Capital ships and aircraft carriers twenty years after the date of their completion may, except as otherwise provided in Article VIII and in the tables in Section II of this Part, be replaced by new construction, but within the limits prescribed in Article IV and Article VII. The keels of such new construction may, except as otherwise provided in Article VIII and in the tables in Section II of this Part, be laid down not earlier than seventeen years from the date of completion of the tonnage to be replaced, provided, however, that no capital ship tonnage, with the exception of the ships referred to in the third paragraph of Article II, and replacement tonnage specifically mentioned in Section II of this Part, shall be laid down until ten years from November 12, 1921....

CHAPTER III

ART. XXIII. The present Treaty shall remain in force until December 31st, 1936, and in case none of the Contracting Powers shall have given notice two years before that date of its intention to terminate the Treaty, it shall continue in force until the expiration of two years from the date on which notice of termination shall be given by one of the Contracting Powers....