JUDICIARY: Four 5-4; One 9-0

Mr. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, looking very solemn and very fit in spite of having celebrated his 75th birthday the day before, cast hardly a glance at his jam-packed courtroom as he took his seat. With a rustling of robes his Associates joined him. The Chief Justice, turning his head, gave a brief nod toward the right extremity of the bench. Associate Justice Owen J. Roberts, end man of the Court, took up a manuscript and began to read:

"In this case we are to decide whether the National Labor Relations Act. ..."

The silent intake of spectators' breaths all but caused a vacuum in the courtroom. At last the fateful decision was at hand, the five-case test of the disputed Wagner Labor Act. Those who had camped at the Court's portal since dawn in order to get seats, felt rewarded. Government attorneys, who had preferred seats, nudged one another expectantly. Mrs. Hughes, who had presumably had a tip from her husband that this would be a good decision day to attend, sat in the front row of spectators paying very close attention.

If these decisions went against the Wagner Labor Act the political hue & cry against the Court would be raised once more. If the decisions upheld the Act, they would forecast a new era in the labor relations of U. S. industry: henceforth no industry affected by this law could refuse to bargain collectively with its employes, discharge them for joining a union, force a company union upon them, or interfere with their organizing. To Labor, to industry, to politics the outcome was momentous.

But already Justice Roberts was getting into the case of Newshawk Morris Watson, discharged by the Associated Press for union activity. Presently it appeared that Newshawk Watson had won because AP was engaged in interstate commerce and collective bargaining did not interfere with the Constitutional Freedom of the Press. On the latter point Justice Sutherland dissented on behalf of the four conservatives of the Court. But the major question of whether the Act was valid for ordinary industries was not settled, nor was it settled by the next case. This time Mr. Roberts read again, a unanimous decision, ordering the Virginia and Maryland Coach Co., which operates buses in interstate commerce, to reinstate discharged employes.

The remaining three cases held the gist of the case: were the steel industry (Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp.), the automobile industry (Fruehauf Trailer Co.) and the clothing industry (Friedman-Harry Marks Clothing Co., Inc.) subject to the Wagner Act, obliged to obey the orders of the Labor Board to restore discharged employes, to refrain from intimidating employes against joining a union?

On these cases, Chief Justice Hughes read the majority decisions. As he reached the heart of his decision, Government attorneys grinned excitedly, every spectator in the courtroom realized that he was seeing history made. Excerpts: