HOW WOULD THE COURT DECIDE?
By Editor
THIS is what Justice Brewer, of the U. S. Supreme Court, has to say of the ominous tendency toward organization to the menace of individual independence:— The business men are becoming the slaves of the combine, the laborers of the trades union and organization. Through the land the idea is growing that the individual is nothing, and the organization, and then the State, is everything; and we have the fancy sketch of the dreamer of a supposed ideal State, in which the individual has no choice of lot or toil, but is moved about according to the supposed superior wisdom of the organized mass; and this, we are told, is the liberty for which the ages have toiled and for which human blood has crimsoned the earth. As against this servitude and sacrifice of individual liberty I wish to enter my earnest protest. The Great Master divined the powers and possibilities of our nature when he dethroned priests and prelates and bade each soul stand face to face alone with its God. In every century humanity has looked forward through tears to a better day to come, and has asserted, as the ideal yet to be attained, the liberty of the individual. Is it not bartering away the experiences of the past, are we not selling our birth-right for a mess of pottage, when we encourage, or even tolerate, the domination of the combine, when we look in silence upon the growing servitude of the individual to the organization? In view of the above expression, we can but wonder what would be the decision of Justice Brewer and the Supreme Court in regard to the right of the general government or the State governments to enact Sabbath or other religious laws which compel the conscience of the individual and lay the individual under penalties for disobedience of the organization in matters in regard to which he should “stand face to face with his God.” A United States Court has decided against the individual in one such case, and it was presumably after counseling with Supreme Court justices. But it is probable that the higher court will before long be called upon to decide directly upon such cases, judging from the tendency of which Justice Brewer complains and certain precedents established by Congress and most of the States. In such case will the court stand for the constitutional “ideal” of individual liberty, or in harmony with “the growing servitude of the individual to the organization”? We shall see.