The Supreme Court last week decided a legal case between Kentucky Whip and Collar Co. and Illinois Central Railroad. The company, which makes horse collars and harness with convict labor at Kentucky's Eddyville penitentiary, was seeking legal authority to make the railroad accept 25 shipments of horse collars & harness which it had refused. But the issue at stake was far bigger than it looked. The railroad's refusal was based on the Ashurst-Sumners Act, passed in 1935, forbidding the shipment of convict-made goods into states which forbid its sale.
Chief Justice Hughes...