The decision of the United States Supreme Court in Lochner v. New York is considered one of the most controversial in its history. Critics of the judgment view it as an example of blatant judicial activism, in which the Court used its power of judicial review to protect conservative economic policies against an era of regulatory reform. Labor reformers had concentrated their attention on legislative solutions to industrial ills. Long hours, low wages, and corrosive working conditions led to child labor laws, maximum hours and minimum wage legislation, and new safety standards. By 1905 many states had enacted statutes to protect workers. Despite the reputation for being conservative, most courts upheld the reform legislation. In
Lochner v. New York, however, the Supreme Court struck down a maximum hours law. At the very least, the ruling in Lochner showed a lack of consistency in the court’s decisions.
In 1893, New York passed the statute that became the point of contention in Joseph Lochner’s litigation. The Bakeshop Act limited the number of hours bakers could labor to 10 a day and 60 a week and included provisions setting minimum standards for sanitation in all bakeries. Earlier, journeymen bakers in the state had organized the Baker’s Progressive Union. It had been active in securing the Bakeshop Act, but the baker’s union was not powerful throughout the state. Only in areas where the union was strong could the 1893 act be enforced. Lochner owned a small nonunion bakery in Utica, New York. He ignored the Bakeshop Act by requiring his workers to labor more than 60 hours a week. The town’s journeymen bakers lodged a complaint against Lochner. He was found guilty of violations and fined. He appealed his conviction, and his case eventually reached the U. S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court decision in Lochner has been characterized as a conflict of competing ideals. At odds were conceptions of laissez-faire economic theory and the nation’s reform agenda. Reform advocates based regulatory statutes like the Bakeshop Act on the state’s police powers. By this authority, a state can act in ways necessary to protect the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens. What exactly constituted a valid use of the state’s police powers was vague. In general, a law based on the state’s police powers had to regulate specifically to clearly recognized health or safety objectives, which reformers believed that industrial conditions threatened the state’s welfare and warranted using these powers.
On the other side, proponents of laissez-faire economic theory believed that maximum hours legislation was an unwarranted intervention into an individual’s right to contract. The Supreme Court had previously ruled that the liberty of contract was protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed that no “State [shall] deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” Adherents held that a worker had a right to property in his labor. State regulation would limit a laborer’s ability to make contracts and therefore limit his ability to utilize his property. But liberty of contract assumed an equal playing field between employer and employee, which simply didn’t exist.
Based on precedent, the Supreme Court should have ruled against Lochner. In Holden v. Hardy, the Supreme Court upheld legislation that limited mine work to eight hours a day as a reasonable use of the state’s police powers. Furthermore, it dismissed the liberty of contract argument, stating that the employer and employee were not bargaining from equal positions. But in Lochner v. New York, the Supreme Court held that the New York Bakeshop Act was unconstitutional. Justice Rufus Peck-ham wrote for a bare 5-4 majority. It held that the law was not a valid exercise of the state’s police power, because the number of hours of a baker’s labor did not affect the public health. He declared that such acts are, “mere meddlesome interferences with the rights of the individual.” Interestingly, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes disagreed with the Court’s decision and wrote a brief but powerful dissent. Pointing to the underlying issues, Holmes wrote, “This case is decided upon an economic theory which a large part of the country does not entertain. . . The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics.”
Both the Lochner decision and its legacy reveal a lack of consistency in the Supreme Court’s decisions in this era. Historians point out that the various courts tended to uphold reform legislation, but they were consistently hostile to laws that supported unions. Justice Peckham did not broach the issue of unions, but he was fearful of increasing government intervention in labor regulation. This decision might explain why the Court moved away from the precedent. In the end, many state courts disregarded the Lochner decision, and its effects at the federal level were uneven. Still, it remained prevailing law for almost 30 years.
See also Muller v. Oregon.
Further reading: Paul Kens, Judicial Power and Reform Politics: The Anatomy of Lochner v. New York (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990); Melvin Urofsky, “State Courts and Protective Legislation during the Progressive Era: A Reevaluation,” Journal of American History 72 (1985): 63-91.
—Debra A. Viles
Locke, Alain LeRoy (1886-1954) philosopher, editor An author, intellectual, and educator, Alain Locke was best known as the intellectual voice of the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Philadelphia, Locke entered Harvard University in 1904 and became the first African-American Rhodes Scholar in 1907. After attending Oxford University in England, he went to the University of Berlin. In 1911 he returned to the United States and began his career as an African-American spokesman and educator at Howard University in Washington, D. C.
Heavily influenced by the work of anthropologist Franz Boas, Locke argued that race was not biological but historical. He went further than Boas by removing any hereditary factors from his view of race in favor of a pure environmentalism. Race and racial relations were determined by the historical circumstances of a time. Instead of races creating cultures, Locke argued that cultures created races. In support of his position, he pointed to ethnic relations and conflict in eastern Europe. He argued that the conflict between ethnic groups in Europe was not different from the conflict between whites and blacks in the United States, but was determined by a different set of historical circumstances. Locke’s most important insight was that race relations pass through definitive stages in relation to political, economic, and demographic change. Thus, there was nothing static about race and relations between races. These views influenced historians of African-American history for years. Locke also recognized that race was an ideology that masked other interests. He was particularly interested in how class interests were covered by racism. Locke did not, however, accept the beliefs of those intellectuals who equated race prejudice with class conflict. He argued that racism had begun as a class construct but had taken on a cultural meaning separate from any class meaning.
His embrace of the importance of culture in race relations and formation led Locke to champion the development of an African-American culture. He argued that one could recognize that cultural differences existed without accepting racist beliefs. In fact, African Americans should use race, Locke argued, as a means to empowerment. They could build self-esteem and solidarity that would help them in the competitive society in which they lived. Locke pointed to literature and the arts as a way to build race consciousness without threatening white America. By doing this, African Americans also would disprove racist myths that held that African Americans did not possess any real culture of their own. This belief that African Americans could use art and literature became the basis for his advocacy of the Harlem Renaissance.
His 1925 book, The New Negro: An Interpretation, solidified his identity as a spokesman for the Negro Renaissance. In this work, Locke argued that the artistic and literary innovations occurring in Harlem offered a basis for the cultural development of the New Negro. This was all made possible by the migration of African Americans from the South to the urban areas of the North. These urban concentrations of African Americans were giving rise to a new culture based on a common racial past both as Africans and as African Americans.
See also race and racial conelict.
Further reading: Ross Posnock, Color and Culture: Black Writers and the Making of the Modern Intellectual (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998); Jeffrey C. Stewart, ed., Race Contacts and Interracial Relations (Washington, D. C.: Howard University Press, 1992).
—Michael Hartman
Lodge, Henry Cabot (1850-1924) politician Tenacious opponent of President WoODROW WiLSON, Henry Cabot Lodge opposed the social reform movement of Wilson’s era and the nation’s lack of military preparedness after 1914. Lodge criticized the government for its slow mobilization, shortages of equipment, failure to prevent strikes, and delays in production during WORLD War I. He and the former president, THEODORE RooSEVELT, led the PREPAREDNESS movement that sought to persuade the Wilson administration and the population of the United States that the nation must prepare itself for war. Later, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Lodge led the campaign against the ratification of the Treaty Of Versailles and U. S. participation in the League Of Nations.
Lodge was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 12, 1850. Graduating from Harvard in 1871 and from its law school in 1874, he was awarded a Ph. D. in 1876. Lodge taught American history at Harvard and edited The North
Henry Cabot Lodge (Library of Congress)
American Review and The International Review until entering politics in 1879. He served two years in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and six years in the U. S. House of Representatives. He was elected to the U. S. Senate in 1893, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Lodge’s influence was exerted through chairmanship of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1896 on. In international affairs, Lodge believed that a large modern navy and a dominant influence in the Caribbean and the Pacific were vital to the country’s security. His beliefs were based on the theories of Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, who had advanced the idea that sea power was the determining factor in international affairs. As a result of Mahan’s influence, Lodge favored U. S. entry into the Spanish-American War and favored the acquisition of the Philippines. Being a conservative, he supported the gold standard and high protective TARlffS.
Immediately after Europe became embroiled in hostilities leading to World War I, Lodge became a proponent of military preparedness. He pointed out that the United States could no longer depend on its geographic advantages and distance from the European continent as a safeguard from invasion. Like others in the preparedness movement, Lodge advocated a buildup of the army and navy and additional funding for training and equipment. Eventually, President Wilson would be drawn into the effort to mobilize the military resources of the nation, despite his promise to keep the country out of the war.
When Germany sued for peace in 1918 and world leaders attended the peace conference in France, Wilson joined the conference with a select group of experts but failed to invite anyone from the Senate, including Lodge. His failure to indulge Senator Lodge caused irreconcilable differences between them, which resulted in the Senate refusing to ratify the Treaty of Versailles. Specifically, Lodge opposed Wilson on American participation in the League of Nations; he felt that the league clauses would involve the United States too deeply in European affairs. Wilson tried to take his case to the people, but he was overcome with sickness. Lodge later also opposed U. S. participation in the World Court. In 1921, Lodge was the U. S. delegate to the Washington CoNfERENCE on Naval Disarmament in 1921. He died on November 9, 1924.
Further reading: William C. Widenor, Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
—Annamarie Edelen
World History
