Mortgage moratorium and unemployment compensation laws
McConville v. Fort Pierce Bank & Trust Co. – Florida, 1931 (135 So. 392); Slaughter v. CIT Corporation – Alabama, 1934 (157 So. 462)
Banks, although private corporations, have become “indispensable agencies through which industry, trade, and commerce are carried on, and while they exist mainly for private profit, it cannot be denied that they are pre-eminently of a public nature and therefore universally recognized as … subject to statutory regulation for the protection of the public.” Commissioner __ Andrews, in McConville Fair competition codes
Louisiana Farm Bureau Cotton Growers Co-op Association v. Clark – Louisiana, 1926 (107 So. 115); Franklin v. State ex rel. Alabama State Milk Control Board – Alabama, 1936 (169 So. 295); State ex rel. Fulton v. Ives – Florida, 1936 (167 So. 394); Miami Laundry Co. v Florida Dry Cleaning & Laundry Board –Florida, 1938 (183 So. 759); In re Opinion of the Justices – Alabama, 1939 (187 So. 244); Robbins v. Webb’s Cut Rate Drug Co. – Florida, 1943 (16 So.2d 121)
“It has been the policy of our government to exalt the individual rather than the state … Our Const was framed and our laws enacted with the idea of protecting, encouraging, and developing individual enterprise.” - Alabama Supreme Court in Opinion of the Justices
“Maximum
prices may be fixed to protect the public against the cupidity of those
who engage in the sale and distribution of essential commodities and
this may be done although the right of individual contract is thereby
limited … [prices may be fixed] so as to protect those within the
classification from unfair and ruinous competition so that the standards
of such service to the public may be maintained at a height which will
protect the public from the hazards incident to attempting to meet
ruinous competition.” – Justice Rivers Buford (dissenting), in Webb’s Struggling with the Depression: unemployment compensation
Beeland Wholesale Co. v. Kaufman – Alabama, 1937 (174 So. 516)
Up from poverty: industrial development laws Albritton v. City of Winona – Mississippi, 1938 (178 So. 799); City of Fernandina v. State – Florida, 1940 (197 So. 454) –
“Every
intervention of any consequence by the state and national governments
in the economic and social life of the citizens has been so branded [as
socialism] … We must not permit ourselves to be subjected to the tyranny
of symbols. The due process of law provisions of our
consts do not enact Adam Smith’s concept of the negative state, one of
the main functions of which would be to stand aloof from intervention in
the social and econ life of its citizens. … It is
manifest … that there has been a growing appreciation of public needs
and of the necessity of finding ground for a rational compromise between
individual rights and public welfare.” – Chief Justice Sydney Smith, in Albritton “[T]he state could take over all property and business of every kind within its boundaries and manage and control it as a public utility. That would indeed be giving Soviet Russia an approving handshake. Mississippi would be safe not for democracy but for communism. … We would have a commonwealth of serfs instead of freemen – parasites instead of patriots … This is not a case of stretching the Const to meet new conditions, but it is a case of breaking it.” – Justice William Anderson (dissenting), in Albritton | ![]() Bank depositors notified of closing (1933) - Courtesy New York World-Telegram Archives and Library of Congress
Milk strike (1936) - courtesy Library of Congress
"Constitutional guaranties have never been thought to be immune from regulation or limitation in the interest of the common good. When limited, the process has been evolutionary rather than spontaneous. Regulation might be appropriately denied today that could be just as appropriately granted tomorrow.” - Justice William G. Terrell, in Florida Dry Cleaning
“Extensive unemployment depreciates consumer purchasing power, and tends to demoralize a large class of citizens, and to stimulate crime, disorder, and social degradation. That is the rationale of the program, as we understand it. Whether it will work is not a judicial inquiry, if it is a legit end, and the means are reasonably related to that end. … [A state constitutional prohibition on public subsidy of private enterprise] could not have meant that a vast economic scheme of stabilization cannot be maintained by the state, though it is necessary that to accomplish that purpose for the benefit of all, some individuals may receive more immediate benefits than others, when all are intended to be benefited.” – Justice A.B. Foster, in Beeland Hugh White (right) being sworn in as Governor of Mississippi (1952) - courtesy Wikipedia |
EMPIRE OF LAWS - The Legal History of the 50 American States > 6. DEEP SOUTH LEGAL HISTORY > 6.6 Deep South (1920-1965): Depression, War and Cracks in Jim Crow > 6.6.1 Deep South (1920-1965): The Slow Death of Jim Crow - Southern Blacks and Criminal Law > 6.6.2 Deep South (1920-1965): The Slow Death of Jim Crow - The "Equal Means Equal" Campaign > 6.6.3 Deep South (1920-1965): The Reaction to Brown and the King Years >