SIR: Will you allow me to express my keen interest in the editorial in your issue of December 3, entitled Child Labor, the Home and Liberty, in which you do me the honor of referring to a letter of mine in the New York Times of November 18? The matter, according to your editorial, is quite simple: the proposed Twentieth Amendment does not confer any more power upon Congress than state legislatures now possesses. The question, therefore, is a question not of principle but of practice and “the economics of the issue” needs only to be brought to the front in order to refute the “fat business men and windy professors” who now prate about the sacredness of the home. Thank you for making the whole thing so perfectly plain. Even a windy professor can appreciate the succinctness and lucidity with which you write. The only trouble with your very perspicuous exposition, I am constrained to think, is that it is not true.
“Does any parent in the United States,” you ask, “now enjoy discretion beyond the possibility of legislative invasion in disposing of his children’s time and labor that it is assured the Child Labor Amendment would destroy?” You answer “No.” But the right answer is “Yes.” The parents of the United States are now protected from legislative interference by the great “bill-of-rights” provisions in the Constitution of the United States, on the basis of which the Supreme Court invalidated, for example, the Nebraska language law which made literary education a crime. But this new amendment is to form part of the very instrument which contains that bill of rights. Its passage therefore could be held to interpret authoritatively (or set aside to the extent necessary to give effect to its provisions) those previous amendments. No state legislature, for example, now has a right under the Constitution of the United States to prohibit all labor of all persons up to eighteen years of age. Congress, on the other hand, under the distinct provisions of the new amendment would have such a right.
It has been maintained, indeed, by advocates of the amendment that the courts would never interpret it to mean what it says. We regard such an assurance as exceedingly precarious; and even if it were not so precarious, we have grave misgivings about the notion which it involves as to the function of a court.
But even if we should prove to be wrong at this point, even if it were true that the proposed amendment merely confers upon Congress powers already possessed by the state legislatures, would the question of that transfer of power be, as you represent it, a mere question of detail to be decided by “economic” considerations of efficiency? We think not. Will you permit me to observe that at this point your conception of American institutions differs fundamentally from ours. We hold that the local autonomy of the states, far from being a mere matter of expediency, is at the very foundation of our American freedom. But under the proposed amendment that local autonomy would practically be destroyed. By far the most important half of life would be placed under the control of a centralized bureaucracy.
But from one point of view your insistence upon the “economics” of the issue is justified. The approval of the amendment would indeed be economically a very great benefit to one class in the population—namely to the vast army of federal agents and inspectors which any exercise of the powers conferred by the amendment would require. The federal agents would be economically benefited; but American liberty and the sanctity of the American home would be gone.
Finally, may I call attention to a slight inaccuracy in your reference to my letter in The Times. You make my letter refer to a vindication of the sacredness of the home which would be accomplished if the amendment were finally rejected by the states. But what I actually referred to was the vindication which has already been given by the enormous adverse vote in Massachusetts (696,119 to 247,221). There are hardly 696,000 “windy professors” even in a state like Massachusetts, where the proportion of professors to the rest of the population is notoriously high. It is quite possible, on the contrary, that the American people is at last making its voice heard. If so, legislatures may well take heed. The voice of the people, when it is heard with the decisiveness of that Massachusetts vote, is rather a majestic thing.
J. GRESHAM MACHEN
Princeton, N. J.
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