The Kansas Court of Industrial Relations

The Kansas Industrial Court Act has the distinction of being the only one of its kind ever passed. The things it attempted to do had never been done before in just the same way, nor have they ever since been imitated. But, to many people, there had been previous experiments closely resembling the Kansas act of 1920. They pointed to various acts passed in the latter part of the 19th. century, and the early part of the 20th, in such places as New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and even in parts of the United States as being forerunners of the Kansas Industrial Court Law. These laws were passed to provide for the compulsory arbitration of industrial disputes. The Kansas Court of Industrial Relations, also, has many times been referred to as an attempt at the compulsory arbitration of industrial disputes. The men who drew up the Kansas act of 1920, however, always claimed that compulsory arbitration was not the underlying principle of the experiment. Instead, they called their plan compulsory adjudication of disputes occurring between labor and capital.