On May 2, 1895, the state legislature in New York enacted a law that said “No employee shall be required or permitted to work in a biscuit, bread or cake bakery or confectionary establishment more than 60 hours in any one week, or more than 10 hours in any one day.” It all reads as so compassionate, as legislation said to be born of good intentions tends to. Except there was more to the story.
As George Will wrote in his 2019 book The Conservative Sensibility, the law was meant to protect large, unionized bakeries from what Will described as competition from “small, family-owned, non-unionized competitors that depended on flexible work schedules.” Utica, NY bakery owner Joseph Lochner was fined $50 “for violating the limits [the New York state law] it placed on the employees of his Utica bakery.” Will went on to conclude that Lochner “and his employees had a right, absent a compelling government interest, to voluntarily contract for longer working days and weeks.” So, while the Constitution elevates the genius of states as the source of most legislation, there are some constitutionally-protected rights that we have just because we’re free to do as we wish. Live and let live.
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