Supreme Decisions

August at Washington, the U. S. Supreme Court continued last week about its business:

Sleuths. When, in 1925, Wisconsin ruled that private detectives might not detect without state licenses, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, wounded, cried, "Unconstitutional!" Pinkerton had been planting "shop operatives" in factories to report to employers conditions among employes. Last week the Pinkerton cry was permanently stifled. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Wisconsin law.

Furnace Case. Famed, also aged, the seven-year-old Claire Furnace Co. case last week bobbed up before the U. S. Supreme Court for tho third time. It involves the right of the Federal Trade Commission to compel manufacturers engaged in interstate commerce to supply monthly information concerning the condition of their business. The Supreme Court ruled that a bill enjoining the Trade Commission from enforcing its orders should have been dismissed by the District of Columbia Supreme Court, jurisdiction lying not with the courts but with the U. S. Attorney General. The decision, limited to the technical question of jurisdiction, leaves the Trade Commission's power still undefined, furnace-makers no wiser.