High Contracting Party

“ In the ranks of each of these parties are found the powerful railroad kings, the irresistible trusts, the indispensable national banks, the vastly influential insurance companies.
As a matter of fact, nearly every board of management of every predatory corporation against which the people are rising in revolt is made up half and half of Democrats and Republicans, in order that, no matter which party wins at the polls, the corporation will have influence at court. ”

“ Of late, the same Personage who has in all ages been disposed to buy men's souls at his own delusive price, and to make his dupes sign the infernal contract with their blood, has been very busy in certain parts of the State, trying to get signatures, under the miserable pretence that party pays better than patriotism, and that times of whirlwind and disaster are those in which he, the contractor, has most power to advance the interests of his adherents. ”

“ The admission which we most freely make, of a power in the state, so to regulate the conduct of corporations as to attain the objects of their formation may appear to conflict with a proposition, which we shall endeavor to sustain; which is this, that the state, by becoming a party to the contract, was as much bound to respect the rights of the other party, as if the state had been an individual. ”

“ Despite the lengthy history of negotiation and compromise which ultimately produced the Act, two things remained constant. First, interested parties and Congress at all times viewed works by employees and commissioned works by independent contractors as separate entities. Second, in using the term "employee," the parties and Congress meant to refer to a hired party in a conventional employment relationship. These factors militate in favor of the reading we have found appropriate. ”

“ While we have never hesitated to vindicate the right of individuals or corporations to enforce the performance of lawful contracts as against subsequent legislation designed to impair them, we have always exacted as a condition that the contract was one which the legislature, or opposite party, had power to make under the Constitution, and that the other party was chargeable with knowledge of all its provisions in that connection. ”

“ No one of all these millions of citizens can, without violating this law, 'take any active part' in any campaign for a cause or for a candidate if the cause or candidate is 'specifically identified with any National or State political party.' Since under our common political practices most causes and candidates are espoused by political parties, the result is that, because they are paid out of the public treasury, all these citizens who engage in public work can take no really effective part in campaigns that may bring about changes in their lives, their fortunes, and their happiness. ”

“ The questions of education, saloon regulation, taxation, corporation control, bank guarantee, pure food, or the tariff on foreigners or foreign goods, have now no certain standing and support in the legislature or before the people.
By making an issue and division inside the party lines, of "assembly" or "anti- assembly" for the suggestion of candidates, a political party is "slaughtered in the house of its friends." ”

“ Removals by wholesale for political reasons, or the turning over of the public service to the members of one party as a reward for partisan services rendered, or as an inducement for partisan services to be rendered, would have been thought, during the first half century of the Republic, not only a scandal and a disgrace, but little less than a criminal attempt to overthrow free institutions. ”

“ The validity of a contract, as a matter of fact, depends upon the ability of the parties to enter into it, for no court can enforce a contract when it is shown that the principals to it had not legal right to make it or to fulfill the conditions of it. It is accepted as a surety of power to observe the conditions when a sovereign government makes itself a party to a contract. The people are bound by their agents, to whom they delegate authority. Nothing is regarded in a more obnoxious light than the repudiation of their honest debts by sovereign States. ”

“ The Liberal Party had already crumbled before the rise of a nominally Socialist Labour Party, placed in office, though hardly in power, by a popular vote largely drawn from former Liberals. The payment of Members helped to bring into keen politics the trade unions whose leaders saw their way to an honourable career in the House of Commons. ”

“ Those who reason thus forget that such transactions involve the sale of legislation; that the sale of legislation may, as it certainly often does, involve the sale of public interests; and that such a joint partnership between a political party and a great money power must inevitably result in a regular system of corruption on the grandest scale. ”

“ But the truth of the matter is that at the present statutory stage of our national labor relations policy, the two factors-necessity for good-faith bargaining between parties, and the availability of economic pressure devices to each to make the other party incline to agree on one's terms-exist side by side. One writer recognizes this by describing economic force as 'a prime motive power for agreements in free collective bargaining.' [14] Doubtless one factor influences the other; there may be less need to apply economic pressure if the areas of controversy have been defined through discussion ”

“ The absence of any such controversy, when there must have been so many occasions to give rise to it, proves, that neither states, nor individuals, nor corporations, ever imagined that such a contract could be implied from such charters. It shows, that the men who voted for these laws, never imagined that they were forming such a contract; and if we maintain that they have made it, we must create it by a legal fiction, in opposition to the truth of the fact, and the obvious intention of the party. ”

“ Its legislative history indicates congressional belief that labor unions should then be put under the same restraints as had been imposed upon corporations. It was felt that the influence which labor unions exercised over elections through monetary expenditures should be minimized, [15] and that it was unfair to individual union members to permit the union leadership to make contributions from general union funds to a political party which the individual member might oppose. ”

“ The relations between corporations and the Republican boss while the Republican machine controlled the Legislature, and through it our municipal affairs, have been so often laid bare by the newspapers that it is needless here to repeat the familiar tale. In short, the party machines and bosses identified, for pay, their interests with the interests of individuals and corporations that largely depended for their profits upon the favor of public authorities. ”

“ They ask whether it is not quite proper that they should contribute money to keep in power the party which gives them laws enabling them to make more money, or that the party which they thus support with money should give them legislation to reimburse them with a profit. ”

“ If you look at the action of the chief political parties, you see no more respect for justice in the politics of either party, than in the politics of the nation, the resultant of both; no more respect for right abroad, or at home. One party aims distinctively at preserving the property already acquired; its chief concern is for that, its sympathy there; where its treasure is, is also its heart. It legislates, consciously or otherwise, more for accumulated wealth, than for the laboring man who now accumulates. This party goes for the dollar ”

“ Protection now has come to be a partnership — it would not be unfair to say a conspiracy — between a limited number of men willing and able to pay largely for legislative favors, and the leaders of the party that has been willing and able in the past to sell those favors, and would like to extend its business. ”

“ The interest which has been shown recently in campaign contributions is gratifying evidence that our former neglect of the sources of party support is giving way to lively interest. Such contributions, however, represent a part only of the total expenses of political management. Party organisations must be kept up permanently and politicians, in or out of office, have a large amount of party work to perform between elections. ”

“ The Government stresses the 'undue influence' of unions in making expenditures by way of publication in support of or against candidates and political issues involved in the campaign rather than corruption in the gross sense. ”

“ It has asserted the arbitrary power of congress to abolish all men's right to make their own contracts, by asserting its power to alter the meaning of all contracts, after they are made, so as to make them widely, or wholly, different from what the parties had made them. ”

“ It must suffice for me to say that the judgment of Congress that trade unions which are guided by officers who are committed by ties of membership to the Communist Party must forego the advantages of the Labor Management Relations Act is reasonably related to the accomplishment of the purposes which Congress constitutionally had a right to pursue. ”

“ The doctrine that monopoly is inevitable and that the only course open to the people of the United States is to submit to and regulate it found a champion during the campaign of 1912 in the new party, or branch of the Republican party, founded under the leadership of Mr. ”

“ It is perfectly clear. It is perfectly clear that union funds are not to be used to interfere in political campaigns and with political candidates, either in favor of one candidate or against another candidate. ”

“ There was a period in which I fancied these parasites were the monopoly of one political party. But I soon learned that this was far from being the case. All the four parties which the twentieth century saw established in parliament are equally surrounded by their camp followers, who each differ from each other only superficially, and, not unseldom, transfer their allegiance in pursuit of fatter game. ”

“ What is, however, much more crippling to the Labour Party than the scanty funds with which its constituent societies supply it, and this insufficiency in the staff of trained election organisers, is the scarcity of trained Parliamentary represent- atives. ”

“ While this principle scrupulously excludes men holding responsible offices—men known to the whole world—shall it be considered as permitting contractors to creep in through the crevices of the constitution, and devour the goods of the people? Such a departure [418] from the spirit, if not from the letter of the constitution—such a gross evasion of principle—calls aloud for remedy. Can a man who holds a contract for fifty or a hundred thousand dollars give an independent vote on this floor? If so, why not admit the Chief Justice and other high officers under the Government to a seat here? ”

“ So far as the strength of parties is determined by their money income the effect of the law will manifestly be to maintain the status quo ante. Theoretically party support ought to depend on the present actual standing of a party, that is, the comparative value to the state of its policies at the election for which its expenses are to be paid. ”

“ To hold, as the Board has done, that contracting out is a mandatory subject of collective bargaining would promote the fundamental purpose of the Act by bringing a problem of vital concern to labor and management within the framework established by Congress as most conducive to industrial peace. ”

“ Next the attack was positive, in the interests of the people at large, endeavoring through the official ballot to deprive parties of those artificial and factitious means of success which depend only upon the machinery of organization. Later the problem is the internal organization of the parties themselves, the legalized primary, the very heart of the party situation. The party primary is peculiar to American self-government. The primary is democratic in its origin. It has become oligarchical through the necessity of organization. ”

“ Without claiming that these methods and principles are either complete or final, the High Contracting Parties are of opinion that they are well fitted to guide the policy of the League of Nations; and that, if adopted by the industrial communities who are members of the League, and safeguarded in practice by an adequate system of such inspection, they will confer lasting benefits upon the wage earners of the world. ”

“ But those Unions had been massed behind the official Whig Opposition. The League had very few Members of Parliament at its head, and not one of those was within the circle of Whig favour. The Unions had forced their policy upon the Tory party. The League forced its policy upon Parliament. So far as active assistance was concerned the Opposition was no more to the Free Traders than the Government. ”

“ But in our country we do things differently. Here it would be considered a stretch of power for any administration to enter into a contract with a private company—a contract binding the Government for a period of twenty-five years, and involving an annual appropriation of money—without the action of Congress. ”

“ The contractors have fairly good representation in this House, and many things are to be said in their favour; but the Government has no right to use the money of the nation in building machinery and then to allow it to stand idle in the interests [Pg 203] of outside firms, no matter who they are or what influence they may have. ”

“ In return, the politicians elected by those parties to the legislature, the courts or to administrative offices usually considered themselves under obligations to that element which financed its campaigns and which had the power of defeating their reëlection by the refusal of funds or by supporting the opposite party. ”

“ If one starts with the assumption that, in the absence of specific Congressional authority, a fixed rule of law precludes contracting officers from providing in a Government contract terms reasonably calculated to assure its performance even though there be no money loss through a particular default, there is no problem. ”