y, and legally unsound." But all these
considerations of public policy, social justice, and world-wide
conviction are set aside "as subordinate to the primary question whether
they can be molded into statutes without infringing upon the letter or
spirit of our own written Constitution." The countries which have
adopted this desirable reform, it is said, "are so-called constitutional
monarchies in which, as in England, there is no written constitution,
and the Parliament or lawmaking body is supreme. In our country the
Federal and State Constitutions are the charters which demark the extent
and the limitation of legislative power."

In brief: The change in the law is just: it is demanded by the change
which has taken place in our industrial system; it is all but
universally desired; the experience and the conscience of the civilized
world call for it; but America is powerless to make it under her present
Constitution. Other countries can make it because they are monarchies:
America cannot make it because she is free.

The clause in the Constitution which, in the opinion of the Court of
Appeals, prohibits the legislature from making this wise and just reform
in our law is the clause which provides that "no person shall be ...
deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law"--a
prohibition which occurs twice in our Federal Constitution (Amendments V
and XIV), and is to be found in many, very probably in most, State
Constitutions. We believe that the Court of Appeals, in its contention
that this clause in our Constitution prohibits this just and necessary
reform in our industrial laws, is sustained neither by the spirit nor by
the letter of this clause in the Constitution, neither by the history of
its origin and significance nor by the course of judicial interpretation
which has been given to it by the United Slates Supreme Court.

Let the reader stop a moment here and reflect upon the principle
involved in the law enacted in other civilized countries and proposed in
ours. It is not that an employer should be mulcted in damages when he
has been guilty of no fault. It is not that he should be compelled to
pay for his carelessness without an opportunity to prove to the court
that he has not been careless. It is that accidents occurring in the
course of organized industry should be held to have occurred, not to the
individual, but to the industry.

"In everything within the sphere of human activity," says