is likely to be experimental and tentative, and always subject to the control of the popular will. That the solution of these perplexities is a challenge to wisdom and not a command of the Constitution is the significance of Senn V. The Layers Protective Union, 301 U. S. 468. Senn, a self-employed tile layer who occasionally hired other tile layers to assist him, was picketed when he refused to yield to the union demand that he no longer work himself at his trade. The Wisconsin court found the situation to be within the State's anti-injunction statute and denied relief. In rejecting the claim that the restriction upon Senn's freedom was a denial of his liberty under the Fourteenth Amendment, this Court held that it lay in the domain of policy for Wisconsin to permit the picketing: "Whether it was wise for the State to permit the unions to do so is a question of its public policy-not our concern.” 301 U. S. at 481. This conclusion was based on the Court's recognition that it was Wisconsin, not the Fourteenth Amendment, which put such picketing as a "means of publicity on a par with advertisements in the press."* 301 U. S. at 479. If Wisconsin could permit such picketing as a mat 2 The Court said: "In declaring such picketing permissible Wisconsin has put this means of publicity on a par with advertisements in the press 301 U. S at 479. To assume that this sentence is to be read as though the picketing was permitted by Wisconsin not as a matter of choice but because the Fourteenth Amendment compelled its allowance is to assume that so careful a writer as Mr. Justice Brandes, the author of the Court's opinion, meant the above sentence to be read as though it contained the bracketed insertion as follows: "In declaring such picketing permissible Wisconsin [recognized that the Fourteenth Amendment has put this means of publicity on a par with advertisements in the press." In other words, it is suggested that the bracketed interpolation which Justice Brandeis did not write is to be read into what he did write although thereby 1*a esential meaning would be altered. 470 Opinion of FRANKFURTER, J. ter of policy it must have been equally free as a matter of policy to choose not to permit it and therefore not to "put this means of publicity on a par with advertisements in the press." If Wisconsin could have deemed it wise to withdraw from the union the permission which this Court found outside the ban of the Fourteenth Amendment, such action by Washington cannot be inside that ban." Washington here concluded that, even though the relief afforded the Hankes and Cline entailed restriction upon communication that the unions sought to convey through picketing, it was more important to safeguard the value which the State placed upon self-employers, leaving all other channels of communication open to the union. The relatively small interest of the unions considerably influenced the balance that was struck. Of 115 used car dealers in Seattle maintaining union standards, all but ten were self-employers with no employees. "From this fact," so we are informed by the Supreme Court of Washington, "the conclusion seems irresistible that the union's interest in the welfare of a mere handful of members (of whose working conditions no complaint at all is made) is far outweighed by the interests of individual proprietors and the people of the community as a whole, to the end that little businessmen and property owners shall be free from dictation as to business policy by an outside group having 3 Of course, the true significance of particular phrases in Senn appears only when they are examined in their context: "Clearly the means which the statute authorizes-picketing and publicity-are not prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment. Members of a union might, without special statutory authorization by a State, make known the facts of a labor dispute, for freedom of speech is guaranteed by the Federal Constitution. The State may, in the exercise of its police power, regulate the methods and means of publicity as well as the use of public streets." 301 U. S. at 478. Opinion of FRANKFURTER, J. 339 U.S. but a relatively small and indirect interest in such policy." 33 Wash. 2d at 659, 207 P. 2d at 213. We are, needless to say, fully aware of the contentious nature of these views. It is not our business even remotely to hint at agreement or disagreement with what has commended itself to the State of Washington, or even to intimate that all the relevant considerations are exposed in the conclusions reached by the Washington court. They seldom are in this field, so deceptive and opaque are the elements of these problems. That is precisely what is meant by recognizing that they are within the domain of a State's public policy. Because there is lack of agreement as to the relevant factors and divergent interpretations of their meaning, as well as differences in assessing what is the short and what is the long view, the clash of fact and opinion should be resolved by the democratic process and not by the judicial sword. Invalidation here would mean denial of power to the Congress as well as to the forty-eight States. It is not for us to pass judgment on cases not now before us. But when one considers that issues not unlike those that are here have been similarly viewed by other States and by the Congress of the United States, we cannot conclude that Washington, in holding the pick 4 See, e. g., Bautista v. Jones, 25 Cal. 2d 746, 155 P. 2d 343; Dinoffria v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters and Chauffeurs, 331 Ill. App. 129, 72 N. E. 2d 635; Saveall v. Demers, 322 Mass. 70, 76 N. E. 2d 12. 5 Section 8 (b) (4) (A) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended by the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, makes it an unfair labor practice for a union "to engage in . . . a strike . . . where an object thereof is: (A) forcing or requiring any employer or self-employed person to join any labor or employer organization." 61 Stat. 141, 29 U. S. C. (Supp. III) § 158 (b) (4) (A). See also §10 (1) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, and § 303 of the Labor Management Relations Act. 470 Opinion of FRANKFURTER, J. eting in these cases to be for an unlawful object, has struck a balance so inconsistent with rooted traditions of a free people that it must be found an unconstitutional choice. Mindful as we are that a phase of picketing is communication, we cannot find that Washington has offended the Constitution. We need not repeat the considerations to which we adverted in Hughes v. Superior Court that make it immaterial, in respect to the constitutional issue before us, that the policy of Washington was expressed by its Supreme Court rather than by its legislature. The Fourteenth Amendment leaves the States free to distribute the powers of government as they will between their legislative and judicial branches. Dreyer v. Illinois, 187 U. S. 71, 83-84; Prentis v. Atlantic Coast Line Co., 211 U. S. 210, 225. "[R]ights under that amendment turn on the power of the State, no matter by what organ it acts." Missouri v. Dockery, 191 U. S. 165, 170-71. Nor does the Fourteenth Amendment require prohibition by Washington also of voluntary acquiescence in the demands of the union in order that it may choose to prohibit the right to secure submission through picketing. In abstaining from interference with such voluntary agreements a State may rely on self-interest. In any event, it is not for this Court to question a State's judgment in regulating only where an evil seems to it most conspicuous. What was actually decided in American Federation of Labor v. Swing, 312 U. S. 321, Bakery & Pastry Drivers & Helpers Local v. Wohl, 315 U. S. 769, and Cafeteria Employees Union v. Angelos, 320 U. S. 293, does not preclude us from upholding Washington's power to make the choice of policy she has here made. In those cases we held only that a State could not proscribe picketing merely by setting artificial bounds, unreal in the light of modern 874433 O-50-35 Opinion of FRANKFURTER, J. 339 U.S. circumstances, to what constitutes an industrial relationship or a labor dispute. See Cox, Some Aspects of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 61 Harv. L. Rev. 1, 30 (1947). The power of a State to declare a policy in favor of self-employers and to make conduct restrictive of self-employment unlawful was not considered in those cases. Indeed in Wohl this Court expressly noted that the State courts had not found that the picketing there condemned was for a defined unlawful object. 315 U. S. at 774. When an injunction of a State court comes before us it comes not as an independent collocation of words. It is defined and confined by the opinion of the State court. The injunctions in these two cases are to be judged here with all the limitations that are infused into their terms by the opinions of the Washington Supreme Court on the basis of which the judgments below come before us. So read, the injunctions are directed solely against picketing for the ends defined by the parties before the Washington court and this Court. To treat the injunctions otherwise to treat them, that is, outside the scope of the issues which they represent-is to deal with a case that is not here and was not before the Washington court. In considering an injunction against picketing recently, we had occasion to reject a similar claim of infirmity derived not from the record but from unreality. What we then said is pertinent now: "What is before us . . . is not the order as an isolated, self-contained writing but the order with the gloss of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin upon it." Hotel & Restaurant Employees' International Alliance v. Wisconsin E. R. B., 315 U. S. 437, 441. Our affirmance of these injunctions is in con As to the Court's duty to restrict general expressions in opinions in earlier cases to their specific context, see Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 399-400; Armour & Co. v. Wantock, 323 U. S. 126, 132-33. |