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...to deal with the background of the contract system on the market place, and to show you that the market has not always made law. And I put up this division of law and discipline, and said law only comes in--in the history of our rise to consciousness--when there is time. And the first act of the courts therefore in ancient times was to reserve litigation for cases after a dead -- death had occurred. There was plenty of time, because the death already led to a standstill by itself.

Now I want -- would -- planned to go on today in this manner, but I want to postpone this for next week, for the simple reason that I got hold of the decisions of the Supreme Court, with which we have to deal -- in the end, and I cannot hold them for more than today. They are very strict over there. And so -- I have not forgotten my trend of thought, and you will kindly still keep in mind this duplicity, that there are two worlds in which we live every minute. The law of -- the order of law, and the order of discipline. And this is forgotten today. This is an indisciplined country mentally. I think, practically, when you look at the Post Office, and you look at the street discipline, we have a very highly developed discipline. But it doesn't enter your mind to think about this fact that this is not a country of individualists, but of fellow men. "Tovarich" is much more noted in this country than in any other country. And that's why I think Bolshevism cannot make a very great impression on us. People are much more comrades here than they are individualists. And that is always -- our whole literature, however, is based on the French tradition of individualism, on the French Revolution. And the true American mentality in all your literature, and in all your courses is therefore overlaid by this--what I call the pseudo-European American--by which you are completely paralyzed.

It's -- when I came to this country, I established courses on true Americanism, because I felt that all my colleagues in philosophy, sociology, psychology used patterns -- as you de- -- see now from Mr. Freud, who have nothing to do with the American experience. They are all pseudo. Because -- in -- the problem of voluntary discipline in this country is so essential for every moment of our behavior, you never know this. Take the -- take the beeline, I mean -- take the queue in -- queuing up at a Post Office. You will find no other country in which this is done with such good grace and such good taste.

And -- so it is an essential experience, and an essential disc- -- law of human behavior in this country that there is a realm of discipline which brooks no delay of the law. And we said, you see--if you would kind- -- keep in mind this formula--discipline is indispensable where there is no time. For example, on

a highway, on a freeway, you see. Without discipline, you -- the -- the whole thing breaks down. You can't go to the police court. When you go, there's an accident, I mean. That's already -- you see, discipline had been broken.

And since all your philosophy, and political science, and so seems to me pseudo-American, seems to me an article of import about rugged individualism--when all this country has lived by comradeship and mutual help--that I have to go back and show you the further steps of the -- history of our laws all over the world, and this gradual experience that even labor and education may reach the point where legislation has to step in, but -- obviously only under very peculiar conditions. And we are just entering a phase of -- perhaps 4- -- 500 years, in which this problem--that not the market place makes law, and not the contract between voluntary parties--but the fate of masses will occupy our attention. So forget about China, and about Russia; they are quite unimportant issues. The important issue is whether the United States will find an American language for its American problems. It hasn't found it, as yet.

In order, however, to lead up to this, now with my legal history in the present--in the last 60 years--let me read to you from the sources the poetry of decisions. -- When an historian goes to the sources, sources are never histories themselves. You think, going back to the sources means to go back to an historian--perhaps, behind the textbook to somebody else who wrote a somewhat longer history, you see. This is not going back to the sources at all. And I -- please want you to bear with me when I now read, as though I was an old chronicler, from the sources certain documents which lead up to this div- -- strange situation today, which we have, that the courts are concentrating on the problem: how can masses come under law? Because we said: by definition, a man belongs to the mass as -- in as far as he has no time, in as far as he is pressed for time.

There is a famous quotation to this purport from old English. Perhaps you take this down, that's much older than our lifetime:

"Necessitous men are not truly speaking free men. Necessitous men," very old word. "Necessitous men" -- -t-o-u-s. "Necessitous men are not truly speaking free men, but to answer a present exigency, will submit to any terms the that crafty may impose upon them.

"Necessitous men are not truly speaking free men, but to answer a present exigency, will submit to any terms that the crafty may oppose upon them.

"Vernon vs. Bethel, {Second Eden}, 110."

That's an old law -- collection of law cases. It isn't important. Only it's

very long ago indeed.

"Necessitous men are not truly speaking free men, but to answer a present exigency, will submit to any terms that the crafty may impose upon them."

So here is a special life situation of the wards of law, that is, of those who have no time. And you can imagine that the problem of the union then was to represent this lack of time by creating a surplus of time. The union has time. The man doesn't have to quit work to find a new place. The union finds it for him. He doesn't have to stand in the office bargaining and saying, "I come tomorrow; I think it over." But the union thinks it over for him; so he can go to work and not miss a payday, which he cannot afford, because he has to bring home the pay envelope. And therefore, in the meantime, somebody else has to take out time to stand there.

And in the -- history of the unions, it -- it has always been the simple case of wasting time that has been a part of the negotiating tactics. It's nearly like Mr. Gromyko. You had to have the longest possible cigar. You have -- had to pick it out very carefully, and offer it to your adversary at the union -- at the bargaining table. And then people would sit there for 18 hours, 26 hours, smoking each other out.

Now don't laugh. This is actually true; that's why I could never -- been a union secretary, because I don't smoke cigars. They make me ill. Then you can't become a union secretary. It's a special humanity which you have to have -- or inhumanity, because it is the -- it is not an accident. Please, allow me to -- to -- to -- to make you attentive. The habits and mores of the negotiators are always reflecting the real situation. The fact that these people dally, and spend three, four, five days, you see, in protracted negotiations when the thing could be settled in five minutes, because both know the outcome usually in advance: how many pennies one will yield, and how many pen- -- many the other will accept. It's all in the cards. But the thing wouldn't be a -- a nego- -- a collective bargaining process if this, which is not in the power of the workers, would not be established as within the powers of the union. And that's time.

Peop- -- man is a remarkable, symbolic, and liturgical animal. Things have to find expression. And I -- anybody who wants to play -- write a play like The Waterfront, I recommend to him highly that he should dramatize the time element in -- in this situation.

Since the worker has no time, labor must gain time. And this is not a paradox, but where you shorten it on one side, the agent whom you create has to stress the opposite side. Endless time. Endless time, allegedly. Of course, it never

is; but it is the fiction that these union secretaries cannot be moved out of their tranquility. Another day, and another day of negotiation. You hear so often in the papers that the arbitrator in the middle says, "No comment," you see. "No progress made," you see. "Nobody knows why." Just because it would not be -- it wouldn't be -- undiplomatic to yield in the -- on the first day. That cannot be done. There have to be protracted negotiations. The word "protraction," so to speak, has a kind of sanctity in the ritual of labor negotiations. I agree. I think so. You see. Why protracted? A -- a normal person cannot understand it. But if you were in the -- in the plight of a worker, you would feel that we must see that his negotiators have this, what he hasn't, they wouldn't believe in the workers, the -- their secretary, if he wouldn't stand pat and not yield right away, you see. It cannot be done, like this, as a bargain, you see, in five minutes at auction. It has to be protracted.

And I recommend to you this term "protracted" as meaning the overemphasis to that which the worker, and labor, and any--"and any necessitous man"--just hasn't gotten.

I once more have here first -- as my first source, the Merchant Marine Act hearings from 1936. I gave you the number already, S3500, and S thous- -- 4110. And if ever you begin to read these documents of the Congress, you will never buy again fiction stories. Certainly not science fiction, because that's much more entertaining than fiction. To prove this to you, I -- first want to read you one surprising paper. "Resolution No. 51 of the Seaman's Union," submitted to the Congress of the United States. Now listen well:

"Whereas the vast majority of the population of the United States is of racially Nordic descent, and"--hear, hear--"and many of the youth of the nation would, under proper conditions, seek the sea for a living;

"And whereas in prehistoric and early historical times, the inhabitants of northern Germany and the Scandinavian countries were in blood, in social organization, and in religion, a unity which recognized no hereditary bondage, and whose seamen knew nothing of bondage for themselves, and they developed a sea power which assisted the Egyptians, the Carthaginians, and later on, the Romans in dominating the Mediterranean;

"And whereas they also dominated the Baltics, the North Sea, and the Bay of Biscay in the later part of the reign of Charles the Great, and for about 200 years after his death;

"And whereas individuals of the sea profession were then eligible to, and sometimes received, the golden spurs of knighthood;

"And whereas Christianity, in its struggle against slavery, had succeeded in abolishing chattel slavery, master and servant laws however held a large proportion of people to the soil to their employers;

"And whereas changes in the Rhodian law of the sea"--the people of Rhodos being big shipowners, you see, had a special law which was then taken over by the Romans--"whereas changes in the Rhodian law modified the system of laws governing seamen, to what became known as the consulate of the sea;

"And whereas the introduction of the master and servant laws made of the seaman under the consulate of the sea, and the laws of Wisby, children of the ship"--very good expression, perhaps you take this down--"children of the ship"--it shows you how man becomes a ward, a child, you see--"children of the ship, and under the laws of Ol‚ron, they became companions of the ship, thus gradually making the seaman more and more subject to bondage, which was further extended in France by the king, who issued a rescript, establishing what is now known as the 'ins- -- inscrit maritime,' this system of bondage was then further extended into England by laws subjecting the seaman on the pain of penal servitude, to carry out any contracts made even in British ports and later adopted into the laws of the United States by the first Congress, through the act which became to be known as the Fugitive Seaman's Law;

"And whereas this gradual loss of the seaman's freedom, and the gradual lessening of the seaman's independence made it impossible for them, held in the shackles of their status, to follow the upward trend of human society, resulting from the abolition of slavery and serfdom;

"And whereas the gradual deterioration of the seaman's life and income made it impossible for them to marry, and thus utterly destroyed their social status;

"And whereas these facts so influenced the population of the United States that boys, youth, and men shunned -- shunned the sea to such an extent that the United States did not have a sufficient number of native seamen to man its merchant marine and its navy, and had become dependent upon other nations' seamen, both for the merchant marine and the navy to a very large extent"--you remember the story of the "Alabama," where there was not one American seaman on this battleship--"upon other na- -- it had become dependent upon other nation's seamen, both for the merchant marine and the navy to a very large extent prior to the passage of the Seaman's Act;

"And whereas the Seaman's Act so changed the public opinion that boys and youth of American birth came in the sea -- to the sea in such numbers that in 1919, when a census was taken, it was ascertained and definitely proven that 51"--not so many--"51 percent of the men serving in the then-merchant marine of the

United States were of native birth;

"And whereas the United States, desirous of a proper share in the world's carrying trade and the development of a sea power reasonably capable of proper and necessary service in peace and war, is now expending millions each year in the building and operating of American ships, which as yet are largely manned by officers and men insufficiently trained to give efficient service and to restore and maintain safety at sea;

"And whereas the basis of all sea power is skilled and courageous seamen, the development of which is as yet largely neglected by the United States;

"Whereas among the purposes for which the international Seaman's Union of America was organized are the development of a native body of skilled seamen in sufficient numbers to give efficient service in peace and war, and to restore to the seamen their true status in human society, therefore, be it resolved:

"That we favor the legal prohibition of anyone being engaged as a boy, youth, or man on board an American vessel in an American harbor, unless he is a citizen of the United States or capable of becoming a citizen under existing laws."

Now that's directed against the Chinese who, you see, under the Oriental Exclusion Act, cannot become citizens, and therefore, if nobody can be hired who could not become a citizen, a Chinese cannot be hired.

I won't go on with the details, but it is important that you understand that the Seaman's Union has all the time claimed that the American seaman will not work side by side with Orientals, or with other people of low status. And that therefore, this is not a complaint about working conditions of myself as a seaman which I -- are under discussion, but it is the neighborhood, the comradeship with people of utterly different ways of life. Today, you see, the percentage of Americans is -- I think sev- -- 75 percent. These 25 percent, however, the Seaman's Union hold, which are of foreign descent, make all the trouble, because the American boys and gi- -- will not work at the same -- you see, at the same activity -- at the s- -- and be engaged in the same thing, and not eat in the same mess hall as the others. I under- -- suppress the very interesting details here given, because of course, I cannot go on forever.

But will you notice one im- -- very important feature? Originally the seamen were free. Now they are in bondage. We have here the American, very patriotic, very Nordic, and very racial, and very dangerous version of the -- of the Communist ideology that primitive society did not know of serfdom, did not know of classes. And -- which is true. No ma- -- no mass has no class. Everybody is a warrior and therefore everybody is an equal. You get only classes after set-

tlement. And therefore, the program of all -- any socialist party in the whole world has ever contained one paragraph saying, "There should be studies published on primitive society" to support the claim, you see, of the masses today that serfdom is not necessary, that there existed once a paradise-like state of affairs in which, you see, a man was free, and equal. And therefore primitive society is a projection of the future goal of the modern masses into the past.

Now it is very interesting that this president, {Crueces} is his name, of the Seamen's Union, very cleverly avoids all comparison with any Communist ideology. But because he wants to avoid the -- even the lightes- -- the slightest suspicion that he is borrowing a leaf from the Communist tradition in going back to primitive society, he makes this very dangerous, and very truly -- ironical loan in the Nor- -- Hitler ideo- -- from the Hitler ideology. People have to be Nordic, you see, to -- and Scandinavian, and Germanic descent, the original seamen, and they helped the Carthaginians, and the Egyptians to conquer the Mediterranean. That's of course just blatant nonsense. But the nonsense is important. And don't despise it.

-- Today there are only two ways of heralding a claim against the capitalistic, or industrial, or -- ruling classes in the world. Either it is all primitive society that already has established the model case of Communism, you see, or it is least the ancestry--as the English had Magna Carta freedom, you see, before the Norman conquest--which has to be invoked as our individual past. All revolutionaries invoke a universal past of mankind. All counter-revolutionaries--you can take this down as an important law--all cou- -- counter-revolutionaries invoke a limited national past within certain frontiers, you see. That the Persians were once this and this, is a counter-revolutionary claim. That all men once were born free and equal is -- would be a revolutionary claim.

And you find it all over the world now. And you find the funny thing, that people, by the ups and downs of revolutionary movements today are forced in various countries to make fascist claims, and -- because "counter-revolutionary" and "fascist" of course is the same, you see, because they want to make revolutionary claims, but cannot under the conditions of -- in their country.

So I think it is very unfortunate, but you see how the masses in this country, quite regardless of program, or -- or party line, are forced to make themselves understood in a society which has lived by the law of the market place to invoke conditions that pre-existed, before the market place was the only place where -- from which all law -- law of contract, you see, between partners, buying and selling, was established.

At stake is the question: is labor a commodity that is sold over the coun-

ter? That's the market place ideology. And that's under -- today, as you know, the -- the battle that is waged: how far all the remnants of this superstition, that labor is a commodity, can be eradicated from the laws. The sooner the better. Law -- labor has nothing to do with commodities in the market place.

The wife of the worker may go to the marketplace and buy meat. But when he enters the factory, he is perhaps selling out, but he certainly is not selling a commodity. He is entering a discipline, that's all. Like a soldier. Like a seaman on board ship. He is a child of the ship. He is a member of the crew. He is a companion of the ship. All these expressions show to you that he is a remembered, in-membered, that he is put into, you see, a body as a limb. That has nothing to do with selling. And buying.

And I had already to rant, to get angry with you, because you said selling and buying was in education, also. There was a seller's market in education, or a buyer's market in education. Wherever you use these dreams of the marketeer, I mean you -- you are on the verge of driving the country to destruction. The market place is one of the four houses of man. The other is the fortress; the th- -- third is the temple; and the fourth is the dancing green. The youth has to meet on the dancing green. The -- market place is only the connection with the outside world. It's -- it's fourth-rate. New York is not the most important city of the United States. It's a big port where all the nonsense comes in.

This overvaluation of the marketplace, which is one-fourth of the organized society, is therefore the reason why these poor people, the unions, are driven to these ideologies of stating that there has been a world before the market place.

Now I do feel that all people in distress project their demands too far. That's why I propose to show you that there have been -- legal orders before the market place that aren't so far away. There are only -- it was only 400 years ago that we lived under a different order. And -- these projections here go too far. All people who are starved for justice go too far. When nobility was -- was arrogant, people said Adam and Eve had no no- -- knew no nobility, you see, because it was the -- the one thing they could invoke, so to speak, the primitive state of man. That played a great part in the arguments against the gentry of England in the 18th century.

And so I beg you to consider the poetry and the importance of this document. Here you have on American soil, in purely American language, carefully avoiding all assimilation of -- of foreign doctrines, exactly the same problem: how to evoke in the citizen of the United States the understanding that the existing legal order is not the only thinkable order, that there are perhaps, you

see, orders that have gone on before with great -- and have been very profitable, because they concentrated on quite different issues. And as I promised you, we will come back to this -- as a crowning of the course, because it will argue best against Communist infiltration than any defense by the old men of the Supreme Court of the existing abuses.

But it is important that the helplessness of the masses is such that in this year of the Lord 1936, the only thing they could think of was the antecedents of 2000 B.C. I think that's very touching. It shows you, you see, the complete despair to make themselves understood in the present schools of law and of thought of this country, which are all based on this short-sightedness, as though ever the family, children's rights, apprentices' rights, production, the founding could ever have ruled by the laws of the market place only. Wherever people had no time, another law had to provide order and discipline.

So I feel that if you would include the seaman's fate in this country, the ups and downs of the sea -- merchant marine, you would already be on the way of -- for independent judgment on the whole capital and labor question, because the seaman's fate on board ship has absolutely nothing to do with the Industrial Revolution, you see. And for this reason, you could only say that the Industrial Revolution has improved the situation, mitigated it, because if a man is on board ship now for six days, of course, he's not in the terrible position he used to be when he was on board ship for nine months, you see.

So everything in -- is in favor of the seaman today through the machine. He has not been created in -- to his bondage, and to his childhood on the -- in the -- of the ship by the modern conditions. But that's from time immemorial. And I think that's the great value of starting thinking about labor, not in the trite forms of the modern commonplace. I've never seen capital, and I've never seen labor. The only thing I've seen is a woman in labor.

I mean this. These abstractions of labor and capital you should try to avoid. You should try to see much more concretely a peculiar situation before dabbling -- in -- with -- in social reforms. I don't -- not believe that labor and capital exist. There exist the engineers; and they make life miserable for the worker. The real fight is today between the inv- -- the engineer and the worker, because the engineer arranges the work in such a way that the worker becomes a puncher; he becomes a cog on the wheel. So I would think that the real con- -- conflict in modern industry is between the engineer and the stoker in the -- in the -- in front of the furnace, for example, you see, because he -- he is condemned by the thinking of the engineer to do less reasonable acts all the time. The engineer splits any human activity into, you see, innumerable little things. And so the man becomes less and less responsible, less and less interested in his activity; and

that has nothing to do with the employer. That's the engineer's cunning.

So I have always held that there are four people who make up the worker's question: the worker in the workshop; the engineer in the designing office; the salesman who goes out to sell; and the manager who -- who mediates between these three other people. There's a book for sale of mine in the library -- in the bookstore which may help you to understand this problem--The Multiformity of Man, it is called--and tries to break through this clich‚ that the conflict of the industrial system is between capital and labor.

I have never believed this. I have been a factory myself. I -- have published a -- factory paper. I have trained union -- union secretaries -- have founded a school for them. I have founded a school for business executives, and so on. And I've never found it so. There are four people. And they are all combating each other. And the conflict is very serious. But the worst conflict at this moment--for example, of automation--is between the engineer and the worker.

And that's of course true on board ship with the discipline of the captain, and the -- you see, and the man on -- at the rudder, and the first engineer down in the -- at the bottom of the ship. There is the rub. You can be very highly paid and yet a slave. And you can be very underpaid and yet a free man. Payment has very little to do with it.

Certainly our -- our farmers' sons in the village in -- 200 years ago were freer than the foreman in a factory today is, who has a Cadillac.

Now we come to the famous decisions of the Supreme Court, trying to understand that labor is not a commodity. There are three decisions which I wish to quote. The first is still as late as 1922. It's the famous Atkins case. Atkins versus Children's Hospital. And the question before the house was -- before the court was, that in the District of Columbia, the -- the Congress itself, who is a legislator of the district, as you know, had passed a minimum-wage law, and has -- had felt that there should be no chiselers who underpaid women in the District of Columbia, and thereby competed unfairly with employers who paid decent wages.

Now on board ship, you see, we saw the problem was a -- maximum payments to the seamen at one t- -- any one time, so that he might not be cheated out of it by the crimp. You remember. This is a new notion, which I recommend to you. Not maximum wages, but maximum payments are the social problem -- for the worker. If he gets too much at once, he's ruined. And this notion is nowhere in your books. So you take it down -- it has to become on -- on -- get on our books. As I told you, the seamen's -- seamen helpers have struggled in vain

for making modern man understand that to get too much at once may be, you see, a crime to this man.

And so maximum payments is -- was the seaman's problem. With the women, it was the opposite--that is, minimum payments. And there has been a battle over 15 years about the minimum wage to be paid to a woman who is willing to rush in and do work, if she gets only 10 cents, just to get something to aid the household. And women are necessitous people, who submit to nearly any condition. I read you this phrase, you see, a few minutes ago. And of course they come under this same classification of "necessitous men."

Now however, undaunted, the Supreme Court of the United States held in this case, Atkins versus Children's Hospital, October term, 1922, Volume 261 of the United States Reports--a highly poetical volume:

"We cannot accept the doctrine that women of mature age, 'sui juris'--that is, independent--"require or may be subjected to restrictions upon their liberty of contract which could not lawfully be imposed in the case of men under similar circumstances. To do so would be to ignore all the implications to be drawn from the present-day trend of legislation, as well as that of common thought and usage by which woman is accorded emancipation from the old doctrine, that she must be given special protection, or be subjected to special restraint in her contractual and civil relationships."

This scorn, heaping to -- on injury, is really the greatest scandal of this decision. -- I myself had two sisters, both suffragettes. But one was socialist inclined; the other, liberal. And one -- of these sisters--the older school -- the 19th century school, I might call her for this reason--held that there could be no limitations of women's employment -- protection as to working hours: at night, you see, or more than eight hours, because they had to claim equality with men. And they would be, you see -- all the men would say, "Ah, look at the woman," if they ask for special protection.

Now it is a fact that women are fortunately more intimately connected with the course of our creation through their body than men; and that the periods of her -- their life are as rhythmical as tide -- as ebb and tide. And to make women work at night in those -- in their season is a crime against their wellbeing.

My socialistic sister understood this, because she cared for the women and not for equality. She had not the abstract notion of an intellect here working up, you see, in man and wife -- in men and women, but she cared for the people who suffered. So she felt -- had no -- took not issue with the -- with the ordinance which tried to protect women from night work. And there was this clash in the

family. Nineteenth-century liberal, women are -- have to be equal, because they form a public, you see, here, up in the -- in your mind. Think of the Abolitionist, you see; and think of the Prohibitionist.

And so, a -- a liberal cannot understand how the same woman, who asks equality in voting rights, can ever get up and say, "But I cannot do exactly the same kind of work as a man." She -- you see, she felt that might jeopardize it. Now the court of the Supreme -- the Supreme Court--asked to protect these poor women against the abuses by chiselers, by extortionists--has the effrontery to hold against the women who claimed this protection, you see, that at the same time, other women claim equality before the law in politics. And I think this is really, I mean, something that you should remember, that the Supreme Court stoo- -- stopped at nothing for remaining in this antediluvian layer of geological justice.

"She must { } -- it -- to -- we cannot ignore the implications to be drawn from the present-day trend of legislation, as well as that of common thought and usage, by which woman is accorded emancipation from the old doctrine that she must be given special protection or be subjected to special {retrain} in her contractual and civil relationship."

One deals, you see -- century has to deal with the real person, the real body of this person and soul; and the other deals with the person's mind. And these are just two worlds apart. And that's why to this day, you see, the world is in two camps. It is not necessary, but it is, because the laziness of the human mind seems to be without limitations.

So of course, the minimum-wage law, passed by the Congress of the United States, was thrown out by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 1922.

We come to the second volume, that's 1935. In 1935, the Supreme Court had the same case to decide, with regard to a minimum-wage law in the state of New York. And there's a remarkable event that the -- it's a famous case, {Morehead} versus New York. {Morehead} versus New York. {Its relationship} { }. It's a very famous case for anybody who has studied the law.

The dominant issue in that case was whether Congress had power to establish minimum wages for adult women workers in the District of Columbia. The Atkins case, which I just read you. Now it comes again, you see, and the -- majority of the Supreme Court judges, as late as '35, has held that the Atkins case made law, and that stare decisis--as the famous saying, you see, you have to abide by the precedent, and nothing can be done. But the great dawn of justice in -- there are four dissenting judges against five who decide the case as -- to

precedent. And one of the judges is the presiding judge, Hughes, a Republican candidate for president in 1920, and he says, "This is nonsense." And the second great dissenter is Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. And the third great dissenter is the future chief justice of the United States, Harlan Stone.

Now these three dissenters are, you see, the greatest jurists this country has had, perhaps Justice Brandeis could still be mentioned, and Cardozo, in the last 50 years. So it is very exciting to see that in '35, the balance was so that the four mightiest minds of the United States bar were holding that of course a woman could be protected; and the five routine judges held that since this case had been decided in '22, nothing had occurred in the meantime to change their minds.

I'm not going to repeat much of the majority decision. But I want to read only one important phrase, because of course, that's time and again what has been said, that -- that -- I think it -- comes for the first ti- -- last time in the volumes of this court, that labor is a commodity that can be sold over the counter. That's of course the point at issue, from the point of view of the jurists.

Now we had -- have seen that the thing isn't so simple. You remember that I supplied you with an evidence, of which the lawyers have never taken cognizance, that a crimp sold the seaman as a merchandise--as his merchandise, the crimp's merchandise, you see. The middle ground of the -- of the 19th-century law was that man himself sold his labor as a commodity across the counter in a strange twist of the imagination.

And so will you kindly realize the difference: seaman as merchandise is the law of the crimp of the -- of the -- of the long- of the--how do you call it?--of the -- here of the shore, of the crimp. The middle ground, a tenuous balance between the facts and the old contractual thinking, is that the worker sells his labor--and there comes in this nonsensical abstraction, labor, you see--his labor as a commodity. Now if you will watch your own step, you will find that you constantly stumble over this idiotic phrase, because one time labor is my commodity as a worker, and one time it's myself. When you speak of "capital and labor," then it's the workers, you see. They are the subjects -- classified by labor, you see. And the next minute, the judge says, "But no. The man is free, of course, at liberty to sell at any minimum wage, you see, without any minimum wage, his labor. Like these women, who were s- -- told that their liberty was at stake, and if the minimum-wage law was upheld, then their liberty was abolished to sell their -- the commodity of their labor, you see, across the counter.

You see the -- the paradoxical situation, that liberty, the pursuit of life--you see, property, and liberty--was invoked in order to make it impossible to

protect these women, because why shouldn't they be at liberty to sell their commodity with the only thing they had, labor, across the counter? Now you have never seen of course a -- a person who is able to stand at the same time on both sides of the counter, you see. The -- the -- here is -- me, I'm selling; and all of a sudden I find myself, you see, on the other side of the counter, carried away to do my work. This is idiotic.

But this idiocy has -- has inveigled people who came from the market place and held this to be the only way of explaining life, of -- as late as 1935. And you -- have to remind you that you of course are thinking exactly in the same stream. And if you do not wake up to the fact that this is idiocy, God help you.

It is still the American dogma. Despite the -- high court, despite the -- they -- they have seen the light. But I don't think the public has. Ja. Please?

(Would you mind going over that again, please?)

Delighted. For the rest of the week I shall.

There are three things. Workers become labor forces in fact. That is, they enter an arrangement where water and electricity, iron and steel, and they themselves are knitted together in some engineer's arrangement of forces. And therefore I, in a factory, am a force. A useful force, a skilled force, what you like. But I'm not a person, because I have to fit into a discipline together. You just have to think of the conveyor belt. And I'm paid for abdicating my personality in favor of this discipline. This is what I'm paid for. I'm paid for a change of address. Just as a woman, when she marries, becomes--from a virgin -- or a girl--a woman and a wife, and that's what marriage is about, that she changes her own state of aggregate, that she is a different type of human being after this day, wedded to a -- man, and half of his life, that they form a corporation...

[tape interruption; tape end]