The principle  is fundamental  and vital.   Included  in the
     right of  personal liberty and the right of private property
     -- partaking  of the  nature of each -- is the right to make
     contracts for the acquisition of property.  Chief among such
     contracts is that of personal employment, by which labor and
     other services  are exchanged  for money  or other  forms of
     property.   If this  right be  struck  down  or  arbitrarily
     interfered  with,  there  is  a  substantial  impairment  of
     liberty in  the long-established  constitutional sense.  The
     right is  as essential  to the laborer as to the capitalist,
     to the  poor as  to the  rich;   for the  vast  majority  of
     persons have  no  other  honest  way  to  begin  to  acquire
     property, save by working for money.

                           [Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U.S. 1 (1915)]
                                                 [emphasis added]


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Coppage v. Kansas