as a man is deprived of the right to labor, his liberty is restricted, his capacity to earn wages and acquire property is lessened, and he is denied the protection which the law affords those who are permitted to work. Liberty means more than freedom from servitude, and the Constitutional guarantee is an assurance that the citizen shall be protected in the right to use his powers of mind and body in any lawful calling."
The very late case of Adams vs. Tanner,[1] incorporates in the law of the United States Shakespeare's statement that: "You take my house when you do take the prop that doth sustain my house; you take my life when you do take the means whereby I live."
As the Supreme Court has so often insisted that, no matter how covered, it will seek out and be guided by realities, and that it is a primary duty to safeguard our present system of Republican Government and freedom as against despotism, Communism and all other systems, it seems only necessary to refer again to the decisions already cited to show that, if the Act is to be wrongly interpreted, it must be unconstitutional as establishing the very spirit and principle of Communism in substituting Governmental price fixing for the liberty-preserving method of freedom and competition.
It has been established that those things which tend to monopoly are illegal, because an invasion of freedom; it has been established that the fruits of property are property itself, that, in taking them in whole or part, you take property; and the Fifth Amendment establishes that, even for public uses, property cannot be taken except by giving a just equivalent found by
- ↑ Adams vs. Tanner, 244 U. S. 590 (see page 593). 1917.
