"Fred Perkins." March of Time, vol. 1, ep. 1 (New York: HBO, 1935).

 

Narrator: Fred Perkins, 56, one time Cornell fullback, now a small manufacturer of wet cell batteries, calls his 10 employees to the workshop, back of his brick home at York. 

Fred Perkins: Frank, meeting out back, come on.

 

Employee: Okay.

 

Fred Perkins: Boys, some of the big battery companies have complained about me to NRA. According to the code, I should pay you $0.40 an hour. I've raised your pay from $0.20 to $0.25, it's the best I can do.

 

Employee: We know it, Fred.

 

Employee: We are satisfied.

 

Fred Perkins: They say, I'm liable for a fine of $500 a day if you go on working for $0.25.

 

Employee: We know what you are up against.

 

Employee: Yeah, forget it.

 

Employee: That don't apply in small towns.

 

Employee: That's right.

 

Fred Perkins: What do we do? Will you work for $0.25?

 

Employee: We're with you, Fred.

 

Fred Perkins: We'll go ahead and see what happens.

 

Employee: So do we.

 

A few months later --

 

in Fred Perkins:' home

 

Victoria Perkins: Is that you Fred?

 

Fred Perkins: Yes, hello, darling. Someone from Harrisburg came in this afternoon.

 

Victoria Perkins: Harrisburg, who was it?

 

Fred Perkins: A fellow named Wilson, a Federal Marshal.

 

Victoria Perkins: What did he want?

 

Fred Perkins: It's about that code business of men's wages.

 

Victoria Perkins: Are they still hounding you about that?

 

Fred Perkins: Yep.

 

Victoria Perkins: Oh, that's too bad.

 

Fred Perkins: This time, they cracked down. He had a warrant for my arrest.

 

Victoria Perkins: Fred?

 

Fred Perkins: He told me I'd have to post $5,000 or go to jail.

 

Victoria Perkins: $5,000!

 

Fred Perkins: I know, I haven't got 5,000, don't know where to get it.

 

Victoria Perkins: What did you tell him, Fred?

 

Fred Perkins: What could I tell him. I told him I'll go to jail and I meant it, I'm going to fight this thing through to a finish.

 

Narrator: To jail goes Fred Perkins, but he does not take his feet lying down. He continues to run his business and his story becomes national news. A rich fellow townsman goes his bond, and after 18 days in jail, between a burglar and a counterfeiter, Fred Perkins is released to await trial. He is convicted, fined, and now to higher courts moves the Perkins' case as eminent lawyers volunteer their services. Harold Beitler of Philadelphia is joined by David Aiken Reed, lately the field horse of Republican opposition in the Senate. To the defense come famed Democrats, John W. Davis of New York, James A. Reed of Missouri, Newton D. Baker of Ohio. Fred Perkins:' legal champions resolve that his case shall go to the Supreme Court of the United States. And nine august jurists, who compose the Supreme Court, will try not Fred Perkins, but the NRA, for they are the trustees of the US constitution. Their Chief, at the dedication of their new temple of justice, emphatically declared:

 

Charles Evans Hughes: The fundamental conceptions of limited governmental powers and an individual liberty have persisted despite crises of disruption and expansion and still remains triumphant and unyielding.