"There was a time when the contractual relationship between the employer and the employee was supposed to be none of the public's business. That time has passed"
About this Quote
Murphy’s line lands like a door being shut on an older American fantasy: that work is a “private” bargain between two equal parties, sealed off from scrutiny. He’s not just narrating a change in etiquette. He’s declaring a new jurisdiction. The bluntness of “That time has passed” carries the voice of government stepping in with authority, implying that any nostalgia for hands-off labor relations is either naive or convenient for the powerful.
The intent is strategic. By reframing employment as “public’s business,” Murphy provides moral cover for regulation: wage laws, hours limits, union protections, workplace safety. The subtext is that the so-called private contract was never truly private because its consequences spill outward - into poverty, public health, industrial stability, even democratic legitimacy. A factory town’s wages determine its hunger rates; a company’s working conditions become a hospital’s caseload. “Public” here isn’t nosy. It’s implicated.
Context matters: Murphy was a New Deal-era figure and later a Supreme Court justice in a period when the state was renegotiating capitalism’s ground rules under the pressures of the Depression and labor unrest. The quote subtly rejects the employer’s favorite rhetorical shield - “freedom of contract” - without litigating it. It works because it doesn’t argue point-by-point; it announces that the argument’s premises have expired. When the private deal produces public harm, privacy stops being a principle and starts being a cover.
The intent is strategic. By reframing employment as “public’s business,” Murphy provides moral cover for regulation: wage laws, hours limits, union protections, workplace safety. The subtext is that the so-called private contract was never truly private because its consequences spill outward - into poverty, public health, industrial stability, even democratic legitimacy. A factory town’s wages determine its hunger rates; a company’s working conditions become a hospital’s caseload. “Public” here isn’t nosy. It’s implicated.
Context matters: Murphy was a New Deal-era figure and later a Supreme Court justice in a period when the state was renegotiating capitalism’s ground rules under the pressures of the Depression and labor unrest. The quote subtly rejects the employer’s favorite rhetorical shield - “freedom of contract” - without litigating it. It works because it doesn’t argue point-by-point; it announces that the argument’s premises have expired. When the private deal produces public harm, privacy stops being a principle and starts being a cover.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work |
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