to the people who were thus directly affected. The Federal Government was helpless. The hands of the State were tied. The freight trains moved on in the Twilight Zone.

In the case of Buck v. Beach,1 a man in New York owned certain notes which were payable in Ohio. The amount involved was $750,000. The notes were sent to an agent in Indiana. The State of Indiana placed a tax on them of $36,357.71. This was declared void by the Supreme Court of the United States under the Amendment, on the ground that the State of Indiana had no jurisdiction over them. They could not be taxed in Ohio or in New York, because they were located in Indiana. The Court has several times declared State taxes void which were assessed against a citizen on personal property which was situated in another State. The Federal Government could not tax these notes. In other words, they could not be taxed at all. They were sheltered in the shadows of the Twilight Zone.

Let us take one other illustration. In Lochner v. New York, the Supreme Court of the United States declared void under the Amendment a law of the State. of New York which limited the period of labor in bakeries to sixty hours per week. On a six-day basis

this would be ten hours a day.

Now the Federal

Government has no power to regulate the hours of labor in New York. That is a State affair, the Federal

1 206 U. S. 392.

2 198 U. S. 45.

Government being possessed of only delegated powers. This was a matter of local concern and had gained the favor of all branches of the local government. The Legislature had passed the law in response to the desire of the people who elected them; the highest court of the State had declared it valid; and the executive branch of the government was prepared to enforce it. All of this effort is brought to naught by a decision of the Federal Supreme Court declaring that such a law contravened the Fourteenth Amendment in that it interfered with the liberty of contract. The result is inevitable. The factories which bake bread for the people of New York may do their work with weary bodies and tired hands, beyond the reach of the law Federal or State. The people of New York must eat this bread, their opinion that its method of manufacture is unsanitary to the contrary notwithstanding. The bakeries knead on in the Twilight Zone.

Every instance of Federal intervention under the Amendment creates a situation similar to the above and widens that shadowy sphere where business operations may go on unmolested either by the Federal Government or by the State. Every appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States under the Amendment, even though the sought-for intervention is denied, is conducive for a period of two or three years to the same result. Such delay is, in effect, temporary Federal intervention. It gives an air of uncertainty to the State law involved. The people of the State must

in each case wait until the Federal Supreme Court has rendered its decision.

There is another phase of the Twilight Zone which may not here be discussed at length. It is wider in its reach than that created by the Fourteenth Amendment, but its shadows are not so dark. It is caused by Federal intervention in the affairs of the State under the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution. There is a well-defined theoretical difference between the two. Under the Amendment the Federal Government can only intervene; under the commerce clause the Federal Government can both intervene and correct. For example, if the Supreme Court restrains the enforcement of a State law on the ground that it places a burden on interstate commerce, other branches of the Federal Government have the power to remedy the situation by affirmative action. Congress has the power to dispel the shadows of the Twilight Zone under the commerce clause by reducing the matter to a state of certainty by remedial legislation. Practically, however, the state of affairs remains to-day almost as hopeless as under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Thus we see that the Fourteenth Amendment, although a humanitarian measure in origin and purpose, has been within recent years practically appropriated by the corporations. It was aimed at restraining and checking the powers of wealth and privilege. It was to be a charter of liberty for human rights against property rights. The transformation has been rapid

and complete. It operates to-day to protect the rights of property to the detriment of the rights of man. It has become the Magna Charta of accumulated and organized capital.

CHART NO. V.

TABLE SHOWING PARTIES SEEKING RELIEF FROM STATE ACTIVITY UNDER THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT

CHAPTER X

THE FAILURE OF THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT AS A CONSTITUTIONAL IDEAL

THERE is a feeling abroad in America that when a given measure becomes a part of the Constitution of the United States, its virtue must never henceforth be questioned. There is here a tendency towards a paper worship which involves a fundamental misconception of the true nature of constitutional law. The organic law of a people can never become fixed or static until the civic life of that people has ceased to develop, and become stagnant. This latter condition never exists, because every community is a living community and life always means motion and progress.

Notwithstanding the prevalence of this abnormal reverence for the letter of the Constitution, the American people are second to none in progressive activity and have gone beyond all in their practical view of life. This is a live country. The development of its political life has kept pace with its marvellous industrial achievements. Bold experiments in the realm of government have been launched without the guide of precedents. With an independence worthy of a free people, new conditions of life have been met with new