You know that recently a workingman’s compensation act has gone by the board in one of our great states because it seemed to the supreme court of that state to be compulsory in its operation. Why, in their judgment, was it unconstitutional if it was compulsory? Because, being compulsory, it seemed to violate the principle of free contract. The principle of free contract being guaranteed by most of our state constitutions, it is held by most of our courts that the legislature can not impair it or take it away, and can not say to the employer and to the employe: “You must enter into a contract of employment under such and such conditions.” Now, I want to suggest to the lawyers present that they ask themselves this question: Is this an interference with real freedom of contract? That goes back to the question: Has the workingman of this country real freedom in making his contract? Here is a great industrial community; here are half a dozen factories, or, rather, half a dozen combinations of factories in one community. These men must take the labor offered them by those factories or let it alone. They must work upon the terms offered them or starve. Is that freedom of contract? Do you mean to say that you believe, in the face of the existing conditions, that the workmen of the year 1911 are in the condition of the workmen of the year 1850, when the individual workman went about and dealt with individual employers, and there was really freedom and circulation of freedom of contract? Those conditions have gone by, and we must see to it that men working in masses, under conditions that are not really conditions of free contract, are safeguarded in their lives and rights by our state legislatures. (Applause)
— WOODROW WILSON