The New Republic

After leaving Pennsylvania, the next stop is Illinois! The searchlight of investigation is now to be turned on expenditures in the recent Senatorial primary in that state. The Senatorial committee which has been looking into the Pennsylvania orgy decided some time ago that as soon as Congress adjourns it will move to Chicago and continue its activities there. Since then Senator Caraway has made charges on the floor of the Senate which if confirmed will make the stigma attached to Illinois politicians quite as serious as that now clings to the Pennsylvanians. READ MORE >>

War, as a social function, differs in kind, not merely in degree, from a croquet party or an afternoon tea. This important truth, apparently self-evident, is realized only with much travail by a peace-loving and peace-wonted people. For the present generation of Americans three years of fighting in Europe have done much to prepare our minds for the whole truth. Yet the din of preparation for our part in the great struggle does not drown the protests of those who are shuddering to see the conventionalities of the tea party shattered and ignored. READ MORE >>

Minimum wage laws are to all practical intents as yet untried in the United States. Even their validity remains doubtful, for the Supreme Court still holds undecided the test case argued nearly a year ago. Un Australia, where analogous laws have been in operation for over ten years, it is different, and in the current number of the Harvard Law Review one may learn from Mr. Justice Higgins, President of the Court of Conciliation and Arbitration, how the federal law has worked during the eight years that he has been the only official charged with its enforcement. READ MORE >>

The Supreme Court has decided that no state may forbid an employer to compel a workman to leave the union under penalty of losing his job. This is not a new decision, but the Court repeated its belief in the propriety of the principle and refused to change the law. The result is that it will take the consent of the legislatures of three quarters of all the states in conjunction with Congress to make illegal such a practice. How has such a result arrived? READ MORE >>

One public benefit has already accrued from the nomination of Mr. Brandeis. It has started discussion of what the Supreme Court means in American life. From much of the comment since Mr. Brandeis's nomination it would seem that multitudes of Americans seriously believe that the nine Justices embody pure reason, that they are set apart from the concerns of the community, regardless of time, place and circumstances, to become the interpreter of sacred words with meaning fixed forever and ascertainable by a process of ineluctable reasoning. READ MORE >>