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But I shall be triumphantly told, Boycotters never do confine themselves to moral suasion and appeal; that they resort to threats, intimidation, and coercion, and it is this which makes what is called "compound boycotting"-that is, boycotting which extends to parties not concerned in the original dispute-criminal and aggressive. Under the criminal code of New York and other States, it is a criminal conspiracy to prevent a person or persons "from exercising a lawful trade or calling, or doing any other lawful act, by force, threats, intimidation, or by interfering, or threatening to interfere, with tools, implements, or property, or with the use and employment thereof." Boycotters who try to coerce people into complying with their demands by threats and intimidation clearly come within the definition of conspiracy. Hence, in the last analysis, the objection to boycotting is an objection to threats and intimidation.

This sounds very plausible. It is easy to deduce from such premises that boycotters interfere with property rights and the pursuit of lawful callings, and that under the national and State constitutions, to say nothing about explicit anticonspiracy laws, they are to be held civilly and criminally hable; it is easy to talk about protection of property rights, the tyranny of preventing people from earning a livelihood, the duty of the Government to secure the equal protection of the laws, etc. But this argument about the employment of threats and intimidation is fallacious and superficial. Its apparent validity disappears when, not satisfied with ugly-looking words, we demand precise definitions. No one pretends for a moment that it would be proper for a boycotter to approach a merchant and say, “You must join us in suspending all dealings with that employer, or newspaper, or advertiser, on pain of having your house set on fire or of a physical assault." This would be an unlawful threat, and people who would try to enlist others in their campaign by threats of this character would certainly be guilty of a criminal conspiracy.

Do boycotters use such threats? Do they contend for the right to employ force or threats of force? Our worst enemies do not contend that they do. They "threaten," but what do they threaten? They "intimidate," but how? Let Judge Taft, who issued his sweeping antiboycott injunction, be a witness on this point. He said: "As usually understood, a boycott is a combination of many to cause a loss to one person by coercing others against their will to withdraw from him their beneficial interests through threats that unless those others do so the many will cause similar loss to them."

This, then, is the threat-this the intimidation. The boycotters threaten third parties to boycott them, if they refuse to join them in the boycott of the original subjects of the campaign. In other words, the boycotters say to others: "If you decline to aid us in our struggles, we will suspend dealings with you and transfer our custom to those who do sympathize with us and will support us." The question which the judges and editors who glibly denounce boycotting have never paused to explain is, how a mere threat to suspend dealings can be a criminal threat, like a threat to assault person or property. No man in his senses will dispute this axiomatic proposition, namely, that a man has a right to threaten that which he has a right to carry out. You may not threaten murder, arson, assault, battery, libel, because these things are crimes or torts. But you may threaten a man to cease admiring him or taking his advice, because he has no claim to your admiration or obedience, and you are at liberty to cease doing that which you have freely and voluntarily done. Similarly, you may tell a man that if he does a certain thing you will never speak to him or call at his house. This is a threat, but it is a threat that you have a right to make. Why? Because you have a right to do that which you threaten.

The same thing is strictly true of boycotting-of suspension of dealings with merchants, publishers earriers, cabmen, and others. You may threaten to take your custom away from them and assign any reason you choose. They are not entitled to your custom as a matter of legal or moral right, and you are at liberty to withdraw and transfer it any time and for any conceivable reason. It follows beyond all question that you have a perfect right to threaten to withdraw your custom. The principle is the same, whether you threaten one man or a hundred men, whether you are alone in threatening the withdrawal of your custom or a member of a vast combination of people acting together in the premises.

Is not the result coercion of men to do certain things against their will? Very likely; but not all forms of coercion are criminal. Coercion is another term with an ugly and omnious sound which is freely used to intimidate the thoughtless. The legality or illegality of coercion depends on the method used. A man may be coerced by actual force, by the threat of force, or by indirect means which the law can not and does not prohibit. Coercion by a threat to suspend dealings is, to revert to our illustration, in the same category with coercion through a threat to cease friendly intercourse. With this elementary principle in mind, the case against the boycott utterly collapses. An agreement to boycott any number of persons is not a criminal conspiracy, and, a fortiori, an agreement among any number to threaten a boycott can not be a criminal conspiracy.1

UNION LABELS.2

The union label is a mark or device adopted by a labor organization, and affixed to goods, or impressed upon them, to indicate that they are made entirely by members

1 Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. vii, Testimony, pp. 634, 635. For a fuller discussion, see also the context in the volume cited, pp. 633-638.

*For account of laws and court decisions on this subject, see p. cxxv.

of the organization. So far as is known, the use of it is peculiar to the American unions. It is a growth of the last quarter of a century, and its importance has increased much faster during the last 10 years than before.

The credit of inventing the union label belongs to the cigar makers. They first used one locally in 1874; the well-known blue label was adopted by the national body in 1880. No organization among the many which have adopted the device has used it more persistently, more skillfully, or more successfully. Indeed, it seems necessary to ascribe the continued prosperity of the Cigar Makers' International Union, in the face of sweat-shop competition, and, of late years, in the face of the invasion of machinery, to the union label, along with a highly developed system of benefits. The Cigar Makers have spent many thousands of dollars in advertising their label and inducing their fellow-unionists of other trades to buy cigars which bear it. They have spent many thousands of dollars in legal actions against label counterfeiters, and they have been active in securing State laws under which union labels may be adequately protected.

One of the weaknesses of the unions, in respect to label protection, is that the trade-mark and copyright laws of the United States are so framed that they do not cover the label of a union, placed upon goods belonging to others.

The aim of the union is, first, to furnish a means of distinguishing cigars, or hats, or shoes, which are made exclusively by union labor, and, second, to induce as many customers as possible to refuse all others. The value of a union label depends, of course, upon the number of purchasers who can be induced to insist on having labeled goods. To induce the customer to demand union-label goods two motives are presented:

First, it is maintained, in many cases, that the goods that bear the label are made under more wholesome conditions, and are free from the danger of carrying infection. This argument is strongly insisted on in the case of cigars. The Garment Workers make similar claims. Their label is supposed to show that the garments on which it is placed have been made under fair conditions and not in sweat shops. It is only in a few trades, however, that such claims for the superiority of union-label goods in respect to wholesomeness are made. The kindred claim that they are made by skilled workmen, and that their quality is likely to be higher than that of goods without the label, is quite generally put forward.

The second method of appeal to the customer, and that which is really important, depends on the customer's sympathy with the aspirations of the wage-earners for improved conditions, and particularly with the policy of trade-union organization. Since this desire to help the unions is the motive which the label chiefly appeals to, it is chiefly to the members of the unions, of necessity, that the appeal is made. Things of which workingmen are important buyers form, therefore, the class of goods on which union labels can be used with greatest prospect of advantage. Cigars and tobacco, hats, shoes, and ready-made clothing are distributed largely among wageearners, and if any distinguishing mark makes the goods more acceptable to them it unquestionably increases the value of the goods on which it is placed. Accordingly we find labels pushed most actively by the unions whose members are engaged upon such goods. It is only within recent years, to be sure, that the boot and shoe workers and the garment workers have given much attention to this method of bettering their position. Indeed, it is only within recent years that these trades have had such unified organizations as are suitable for the purpose; but both the Boot and Shoe Workers and the United Garment Workers are now devoting energy and money to creating a demand for their labels. Both of them insert many advertisements in labor papers and pursue other advertising methods. The Hatters and the Brewery Workmen show similar activity.

Another class of goods on which it is possible, under some circumstances, to use a label with advantage, consists of materials of building or manufacture, which, though

bought by capitalists, are placed by them in the hands of workingmen for further elaboration. If these workingmen are strongly organized, they may, by refusing to handle materials which do not bear the label, compel their employers to patronize union-label firms, with much the same effect as if the workingmen themselves were the purchasers. Thus the brickmakers in the vicinity of Chicago were able for several years to secure the forcing of union-label bricks into a large part of the buildings constructed there, through the action of the union bricklayers in refusing to lay any other bricks. In the same way the Chicago carpenters compelled the purchase of woodwork got out by union mills.

The technical methods of applying the union label vary with the character of the goods on which it is desired to use it. In most cases a printed label of paper is attached to each article, or, as in the case of cigars, to the package. The Boot and Shoe Workers impress their label on the sole or insole with a steel stamp, or print it on the lining of the shoe with a rubber stamp. In the garment-making trades a cloth label is sewed to each garment. The Hatters sew a paper label inside the hat under the band. The Brickmakers have a brass roller bearing their label attached to the brick machine, which stamps the label into each brick as the soft clay passes under it. The Horseshoers use a steel stamp, with which they impress their label upon the hot shoe. The labels of the printers, furnished in the form of small electrotypes, leave their impression upon the printed sheet. Several unions which render services instead of producing commodities have union cards to hang in places of business where only union men are employed. This is the method of the Barbers, the Retail Clerks, the Hotel Employees, and the Butcher Workmen. The Hotel Employees and the Clerks have also adopted badges to be worn by the members.

DISPUTES BETWEEN UNIONS.

Among the labor combats which seem to outsiders most devoid of reason are the struggles of unions with each other for the control of particular work. Most of these disputes, as they now appear among American unions, may be divided into two great classes: First, disputes as to the trade to which certain work belongs; second, conflicts in which the principle of organization by industries is opposed to the principle of organization by trades. The former class has come to be known in Great Britain as demarcation disputes. The latter class seems to be little known outside of America. Both classes are known in this country as jurisdiction disputes.

Demarcation disputes.-In the typical form to which the phrase "demarcation dispute" is most strictly applicable, two unions, the greater part of whose work is well distinguished, meet on a border ground. In Great Britain the contests between the carpenters and the joiners have furnished a well-marked case; but in this country carpentry and joinery have never been organized as distinct trades. The Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners has had similar troubles, however, with the Furniture Workers and the Machine Wood Workers. Both of these unions were primarily composed of factory machine workers, while the Carpenters and Joiners were primarily handicraftsmen. The Carpenters, however, were inclined to claim the field of machine work also, at least so far as it replaced hand work which had formerly belonged to their trade. The machine unions, on the other hand, seemed to trespass on the domain of the Carpenters by taking in some hand workers. The Amalgamated Wood Workers, the organization which was formed in 1895 by the union of the Furniture Workers and the Machine Wood Workers, now claims the right to put up saloon, bank, and drugstore fixtures manufactured in shops under its control, while the Carpenters claim jurisdiction over all men engaged in running wood-working machinery.

The constant friction between the Stone Cutters, engaged in cutting soft stone, and the Granite Cutters, belongs to this class of quarrels.1 Local disputes of the same

1 For a curious instance, see Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. viii, p. 335.

character are frequent, especially in various building trades. Many occur between the different workers in iron. Coal bunkers and iron smokestacks have been matters of dispute between the boiler makers and the structural iron workers.1 Structural iron workers and architectural iron workers have quarreled over the putting up of iron mullions.2

A curious instance occurred some years ago in Chicago, when the steam fitters claimed the right to cut holes for their pipes through the wooden floors. The carpenters had previously done this work. The Building Trades Council decided that it should go to the steam fitters, and go to them it did; to the distinct injury, it is maintained on the part of the employers, of the character of the work.3

A second kind of demarcation dispute arises when a union is organized to control a particular kind of work, the whole of which is claimed by an existing union. The dispute between the Carpenters and the Amalgamated Wood Workers has now taken on this character, since the whole field of the second union is claimed by the first. The Wood Workers themselves take the same attitude toward the Box Makers and toward the Piano Workers which the Carpenters take toward them. They have opposed the formation of both these unions, have done what they could to break them up, and have been able to prevent the recognition of them by the American Federation of Labor. In the same way the United Garment Workers have opposed the separate organization of the Custom Clothing Makers, the Painters that of the Paper Hangers, the Plumbers that of the Steam Fitters, the Cigar Makers that of the Stogie Makers. A special case of this kind of trouble arises when a branch of a British union is established in this country, and comes into conflict with an American union covering the same ground. The two important instances of such conflict are those of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, and the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. The latter organization is composed of such workmen as are called machinists in America, and it comes into unavoidable conflict with the International Association of Machinists.

These disputes derive their interest to employers and to the public from the fact that the unions back their opinions with strikes. It seems intolerable that an employer, who is ready to pay the wages and to comply with all the conditions asked for by his workmen, should find his work stopped because two sections of the workmen can not agree between themselves about the boundaries of their fields of work. The workingmen themselves seem to lose as much by such stoppages as the masters, and they seem to have no more to gain.

The most obvious motive of the disputants in such cases is the motive which determines so large a part of trade-union policy-the desire to get the greatest possible amount of work to do. The field of work is conceived as divided, on some basis of established custom, among the several groups of workers. Each group has a sense of proprietorship in that which it has occupied. There is a disputed land around its borders, which it feels to be its property, but which is claimed, with equal conviction, by the neighboring groups. The selfishness of each group suffers from the operations of the others within this disputed tract; but its sense of justice is outraged also. The question of the boundary becomes a question of pride and a question of principle; and it is fought over with an eagerness which is out of all proportion to the intrinsic importance of the dispute.

But there is another aspect of such questions, which makes them important to workingmen as a whole, and which may sometimes entitle one of the disputants to consider that it represents the interest of the working class. If the employer is permitted, at his pleasure, to choose which of two unions shall do a given work, the effect is the same in kind as if he were permitted to revert to the individual bargain.

1 Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. viii, pp. 326, 362.

2 Ibid., pp. 335, 336, 470, 475.

Ibid., p. 362.

The work of the higher-paid unions may be handed over, little by little, to the lower paid. The higher standard may be nominally maintained; but its field of application is gradually narrowed, and, taking the employment as a whole, there is an insidious and unacknowledged lowering of the standard rate. There is some reason for supposing that when labor tribunals, building trades councils and the like, have opportunity to decide questions of jurisdiction, they are likely to prefer the union which has the higher standard. This is the direction in which they might be expected to lean, if they acted in view of the ordinary trade-union assumptions as to the broad interests of the working class.

Organization by industries v. organization by trades.—The original idea of trade unionism involves the notion of a trade, requiring a particular kind of skill or activity, as the basis of common interest and therefore of unity of organization. With the advance of the labor movement the tendency to greater aggregation has increased among the labor unions, as in other departments of industrial life, till such a union as the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners includes all grades of workers, from the highly skilled artisan to the mere feeder of a machine. A few unions have fully abandoned the notion of the trade as the basis of unity, and have substituted the notion of the industry. The United Brewery Workmen undertake to include every wage earner about the breweries, the United Mine Workers every wage earner about the coal mines, the International Typographical Union all wage earners directly connected with printing. The Mine Workers aim to bring all the men at a given mine, under ground and on the surface, firemen, engineers, and all, into one local union. The policy of the Brewery Workmen is to form separate local unions of brewers, maltsters, bottlers, coopers, team drivers, firemen, engineers, etc., all in subordination to the one national body. The printers, somewhat differently situated, do not feel that the engineers and the firemen in their establishments, or other workers who do not possess any kind of skill which is specifically related to printing, form one industrial unit with themselves. They desire, however, to organize under their jurisdiction all workers who do possess such skill-stereotypers, photoengravers, mailers, type founders, and even newspaper writers. They extend the notion so far as to include the machinists who keep the typesetting machines in order. Their plan of organization, like that of the Brewery Workmen, is to form the followers of each craft, so far as practicable, into separate local unions. The pressmen and the bookbinders have broken away and formed independent national unions of their own.

When an organization claims to control all the workers in a given establishment, without regard to their particular occupations, it is certain to come into conflict with other organizations which claim jurisdiction over some part of the same persons by virtue of their occupations. The Typographical Union, in resolving that all machinists who are employed in the care of linotypes must belong to it, comes into conflict with the International Association of Machinists. The United Mine Workers conflict with the Stationary Firemen, the Steam Engineers, and the Blacksmiths; the Brewery Workmen with the Firemen, the Engineers, the Coopers, the Painters, and the Team Drivers.

The argument for trade organization is based partly on the common interest of the workers at a given occupation. A cooper is a cooper, whether the chief business of his employer is the making of beer or the production of barrels for sale. Whatever the nature of the establishment he may chance to work in, he should, it is said, be governed by the same trade rules, and should stand with his fellow-craftsmen in maintaining common rates of wages and conditions of labor.

To undertake to unite in a single organization workmen of various degrees of skill, various rates of customary wages, and various degrees of economic power against

1 There is no rule to prevent a man from belonging to both organizations, but not many men care to pay double dues or to owe a divided allegiance.

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