scientific data intended to establish beyond question a substantial
relationship between the challenged statute and public health, safety,
or morals. Whenever the Court was disposed to uphold measures pertaining
to industrial relations, such as laws limiting hours[92] of work, it
generally intimated that the facts thus submitted by way of
justification had been authenticated sufficiently for it to take
judicial cognizance thereof; but whenever it chose to invalidate
comparable legislation, such as enactments establishing minimum wages
for women and children,[93] it brushed aside such supporting data,
proclaimed its inability to perceive any reasonable connection between
the statute and the legitimate objectives of health or safety, and
condemned the former as an arbitrary interference with freedom of
contract.

During the great Depression, however, the _laissez faire_ tenet of
self-help was supplanted by the belief that it is peculiarly the duty of
government to help those who are unable to help themselves; and to
sustain remedial legislation enacted in conformity with the latter
philosophy, the Court had to revise extensively its previously
formulated concepts of "liberty" under the due process clause. Not only
did the Court take judicial notice of the demands for relief arising
from the depression when it overturned prior holdings and sustained
minimum wage legislation,[94] but in upholding State legislation
designed to protect workers in their efforts to organize and bargain
collectively, the Court virtually had to exclude from consideration the
employer's contention that such legislation interfered with his liberty
of contract in contravention of the due process clause and to exalt as a
fundamental right the correlative liberty of employees, which right the
State legislatures were declared to be competent to protect against
interference from private sources. To enable these legislatures to
balance the equities, that is, to achieve equality in bargaining power
between employer and employees, the Court thus sanctioned a diminution
of liberty in the sense of the employer's freedom of contract and a
corresponding increase in the measure of liberty enjoyable by the
workers. To the extent that it acknowledged that liberty of the
individual may be infringed by the coercive conduct of other individuals
no less than by the arbitrary action of public officials, the Court in
effect transformed the due process clause into a sou