standards for employees of government contractors, known as the Walsh–Healey Public Contracts Act It provided for minimum wages and overtime, safety and sanitation rules, and restrictions on the use of child and convict labor. In 1937, he declared himself an opponent of the administration and joined the opposition to FDR's plan to enlarge the Supreme Court. Speaking at New York City's Carnegie Hall, Walsh argued his position in terms of the separation of powers, judicial independence, and the proper role of the executive. He described the public's reaction as "a state of fear, of apprehension, of bewilderment, of real grief, as a result of the proposal to impair, if not indeed to destroy, the judicial independence of the Supreme Court". He also emphasized the role of the Court in protecting civil liberties, citing two examples: He continued: One Cabinet official described his overall relationship to the administration as "not sympathetic ... to put it mildly". Along with four of his colleagues, Walsh condemned antisemitism in Nazi Germany in a Senate speech on June 10, 1933. World War II Immediately following the defeat of France, Walsh was the sponsor, along with Representative Vinson, of the Vinson–Walsh Act of July 1940 that increased the size of the U.S. Navy by 70 percent. It included seven battleships, 18 aircraft carriers and 15,000 aircraft. In the Senate, Walsh was a consistent isolationist He supported American neutrality with respect to the Spanish Civil War and opposed an American alliance with the United Kingdom until the attack on Pearl Harbor. Speaking in the Senate on June 21, 1940, he denounced Roosevelt's plans to provide armaments to Great Britain: At the 1940 Democratic National Convention, where Walsh supported James Farley for president rather than FDR, he and his fellow isolationist Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana proposed a plank for the party platform that read: "We will not participate in foreign wars and we will not send our army or navy or air force to fight in foreign lands outside of the Americas." When the President added the words "except in case of attack", they accepted the change. In that year's election, he out-polled Roosevelt in Massachusetts despite being opposed by the CIO for his anti-New Deal positions. After the 1940 election in particular, he opposed any action that would compromise American neutrality, first in closed-door hearings of the Naval Affairs Committee, which he headed, and then in