Class action

“ In terms of manageability, the superiority requirement is closely related to predominance, as the presence of central individual issues makes class-action management more difficult. Newbern, supra, § 8:6.
The class-action mechanism is a superior method to adjudicate the overarching, predominant issue of Philip Morris's misrepresentation regarding Lights cigarettes. ”

“ Our small businesses are confronting other challenges that we must address. Too many entrepreneurs face the threats of costly junk lawsuits. Last year, we passed bipartisan class-action reform to ease this burden. ”

“ In short, to completely renounce class pricing as justified by class accounting would be to eliminate in practical effect the cost justification proviso as to sellers having a large number of purchasers, thereby preventing such sellers from passing on economies to their customers. ”

“ Production on a huge scale, the interposition of wholesalers and middlemen of all sorts, shopping by mail or telephone, should not disguise the fact that the Consuming Class are really employers. It is only in an indirect way, it is true, but still a real way for all that. If the direct employer, the rent-and interest-taker refuse or are unable to perform their duties, then (leaving aside the legislature for the present) these devolve upon the Consuming Class in so far as they benefit by the laborer's work. ”

“ Legislative attempts to raise wages, limitation of competition in the labor market, taxes or restrictions on machinery, and on improvements of all kinds tending to dispense with any of the existing labor—even, perhaps, protection of the home producer against foreign industry—are very natural (I do not venture to say whether probable) results of a feeling of class interest in a governing majority of manual laborers. ”

“ Next to the attempts to regulate wages, and provide artificially that all who are willing to work shall receive an adequate price for their labor, we have to consider another class of popular remedies, which do not profess to interfere with freedom of contract; which leave wages to be fixed by the competition of the market, but, when they are considered insufficient, endeavor by some subsidiary resource to make up to the laborers for the insufficiency. ”

“ The broad truth is, that the value of Commodities and the value of Credits is now left to the safe action of Demand and Supply under free competition in every country in Christendom: why should not the value of Services be left to the same safe and inexorable action? Governments gave up long ago all idea of regulating directly or indirectly the prices of merchandise and the prices of commercial claims of all kinds: will they not shortly give up also all idea of regulating directly or indirectly the rates of Wages? They will. ”

“ This state of affairs is far from satisfactory to either employers or men, and the writer believes the system of regulating the wages and conditions of employment of whole classes of men by conference and agreement between the leaders of unions and manufacturers to be vastly inferior, both in its moral effect on the men and on the material interests of both parties, to the plan of stimulating each workman's ambition by paying him according to his individual worth, and without limiting him to the rate of work or pay of the average of his class. ”

“ But if employers are apt to take too narrow a view of the worth of good wages as a positive source of high production, labourers are apt to take equally narrow views of the worth of high production as a source of good wages. The policy of limiting production is expressly countenanced by a few of their trade unions, with the concurrence, I fear, of a considerable body of working-class opinion. ”

“ National banks, national credit establishments, State and Communal centres of distribution for the purchase and exchange of goods will supplant and take over the huge enterprises for the gain of a class which now exercise such enormous influence, and accumulate such vast profits under protection of the middle-class State. ”

“ A natural result of all this is to produce in the minds of the working classes a feeling that the Legislature ought to secure to them a constant supply of work at high rates of wages, altogether leaving out of consideration the inevitable effect of such a course in checking demand. Naturally, each class expects to receive the benefit of this policy, and it is not surprising that the example of the manufacturers in demanding Protection should be followed, and even bettered, by the working men. ”

“ The class-bias, fostering the belief that the question in each case is entirely one between employer and employed, between capital and labor, shuts out the truth that the interests of all consumers are involved, and that the immense majority of consumers belong to the working-classes themselves. If the consumers are named, such of them only are remembered as belong to the wealthier classes, who, it is thought, can well afford to pay higher prices. ”

“ These acts, and others of similar nature, were intended for the subjugation of laborers and the benefit of the employers of labor. It is only since the era of popular government that legislation for an opposite purpose has come in vogue. Gradually the right of the workingman to have the price of his labor fixed as is the price of other commodities, by the law of supply and demand, came to be recognized, although the progress was pitifully slow. ”

“ They should be informed of the leading objects which the new system aims at, such, for instance, as rendering mutual the interests of employer and employé through "high wages and low labor cost," the gradual selection and development of a body of first class picked workmen who will work extra hard and receive extra high wages and be dealt with individually instead of in masses. ”

“ The unions also chafed under governmental restraint upon their freedom of action, especially when the government lifted its limitation on prices and left the consumer at the mercy of an open market. As prices and profits mounted, they felt entitled to commensurate wage increases. ”

“ Each group with a claim to a share of the product, by organization, agitation, and other tricks of the market place strives to forward its interest. 59 It explores, by pressure upon the price mechanism and otherwise, the full extent of the dependence of the industrial system upon it or its product, as when monopolists control prices, or a trade union strikes to enforce a wage demand. Each group or agent tends to favor or resist changes in laws, industrial methods, and institutions according as it expects to be benefited or otherwise by the change. ”

“ According to the former, and less radical, plan, publicity of accounts would be required in every industry; and state or national commissions would have full power to supervise the conditions of production, to set a minimum standard below which wages must not fall, to fix maximum prices above which the products must not be sold, to prevent stock- watering, to enforce standards of honesty and good workmanship in goods, to see to it that all competition is carried on fairly, and to forbid excessive salaries to managers. ”

“ You see, gentlemen, this private legislation is enacted for the especial purpose of creating such infractions, and infractions are manufactured for the purpose of making money. Thus the manufacturer uses every means of reducing the nominal wage, and of profiting even by accidents over which the worker has no control. ”

“ If the State can wrench the control of the prices of commodities from the hands of all the people exercising their inalienable right of pursuit through the means of free competition pursued at their free discretions, it is, of course, inevitably fixing the compensation for their services and labors. ”

“ Thus the reader will see that when the manufacturers could not induce a single overseer to give up their poor to be worked in the factories, they had recourse to the Poor Law Commissioners, who here offer them all the means at their disposal to enable them to effect their purpose. It would occupy too much of our space were we to follow in detail, this scheme of the manufacturers to reduce the wages of labor. ”

“ And nobody maintains that the commercial class is immaculate: every class should come under the regulation of good statutory law. I only claim that it would be wrong and foolish to take away in whole or in part the accumulations of the commercial class. ”

“ The farmer has abundant harvests, but their value is absorbed in oppressive charges for transportation to market, and he is bound down with onerous and unequal taxes until his labor has ceased to [Pg 323] be remunerative. While this is true of most industrial pursuits, the manufacturer, protected by the government, the moneyed men of Wall street, who operate in gold and stocks, and the railroad men, who are protected by the decisions of the courts of the country, all amass princely fortunes—the result of special privileges bestowed upon them. ”

“ The Congress hereby finds that the existence, in industries engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, of labor conditions detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency, and general well-being of workers (1) causes commerce and the channels and instrumentalities of commerce to be used to spread and perpetuate such labor conditions among the workers of the several States; (2) burdens commerce and the free flow of goods in commerce; (3) constitutes an unfair method of competition in commerce ”

“ The point to be determined has been, whether capital or labor shall in future determine the terms upon which the invested resources of the nation are to be employed. To the employer, it is a question whether his individual rights as to the control of his property shall be so far overborne, as to not only deprive him of his freedom, but also expose him to interferences seriously impairing the value of his capital. ”

“ All the great establishments, of every kind, now in the hands of a few proprietors, but employing a great number of wage laborers, would be broken up; for few, or no persons, who could hire capital, and do business for themselves, would consent to labor for wages for another.
The credit furnished by this system would always be stable; for the system is probably capable of furnishing, at all times, all the credit, and all the money, that can be needed. ”

“ There can be no evasion of such prohibition, because every tradesman in food will be merely the salaried servant of the Company, and there will be no temptation to it, because his salary will be the same, whether he sells or not. Of all articles of general consumption, the government will furnish its own priced standard; any man will be allowed to sell what he can produce above that standard, at what price he can get for it; but all goods below the government standard will be marked and priced as of such inferior quality;—and all bad food, cloth, or other article of service, destroyed. ”

“ The rapidly developing capitalistic class has come to realize the deadening effect of the bureaucratic regime on industry and commerce, and resolutions have been passed at numerous conventions of manufacturers, bankers, and other big business-men, condemning the stifling policy of the archaic government. ”

“ But, although the direct intervention of the state, with the view of raising the nominal rates of wages, is, according to theory Factory legislation. and experience, of doubtful advantage, still, when we consider real wages in the evident sense of the term, there seems to be an almost indefinite scope for state interference. The effect of the Factory Acts and similar legislation has been undoubtedly to raise the real wages of the working-classes as a whole, although at first the same arguments were used in opposition to these proposals as in the case of direct relief from the poor-rates. ”

“ The flow to this industry, therefore, of both capital and labor, inevitably reduces not only wages by the direct competition between workingmen, but also the profit out of which high wages were originally paid.
Employer, therefore, and employee are both slaves of the market; the employer cannot get more than the market price for his goods, and out of this he has to pay for his raw material, the cost of running the factory, and the wages of his men. He cannot reduce the price of raw material nor the cost of running the factory—rent, fuel, etc. ”

“ The mercantile class, as merchants only, must be impoverished by this policy; but a few individuals of this class, more frequently evade its oppression, than of other labouring classes, by blending the capitalist with the mercantile character; and becoming bankers, lenders to government, or factory owners. So far also, as the agricultural and mechanical classes, are interspersed with individuals endowed with pecuniary privileges, such individuals derive emolument from the property-transferring policy, not as mechanicks or agriculturists, but in their privileged characters. ”

“ All such grants relating to any known trade or manufacture have been held by all the judges of England, whenever they have come up for consideration, to be void at common law as destroying the freedom of trade, discouraging labor and industry, restraining persons from getting an honest livelihood, and putting it into the power of the grantees to enhance the price of commodities. ”

“ If, then, it is true that manufacturers are compelled by the necessities of competition to pay as much for labor as it is for the time-being worth, and, if they do not and cannot combine to depress wages, I am unable to see where arises the necessity for the workmen to combine 493for the purpose of protecting themselves against capital. ”

“ Now where labor is so scantily paid, fabrics can be produced more cheaply; and if these fabrics can be sent into this country, free of duty, they will undersell ours, until the prices of our labor and the condition of our laborers are reduced to theirs. Nothing is left to protect our industry but the cheaper freight of the materials, and that is too trifling a compensation to be of any account. ”