and enter politics in an organized way a like beneficial result will be attained. The trend of many recent court decisions, in my opinion, makes it imperative that we enter the political arena in the same persistent way that we have entered the industrial world, and the unjust laws of which we make complaint will soon become less numerous, and unjust court decisions less frequent. J. T. Carey. President, International Brotherhood of Papermakers, Pulp, Sulphite, and Paper Mill Workers. The decision of the United States Supreme Court against the United Hatters of America, is to the effect that they, as an organization injured the business of Loewe, the hat manufacturer, by puting him on a "we don't patronize" list. The court's ruling was that the organization of hatters came within the pale of the Sherman anti-trust law, and that the hatters are liable for three times the amount of injury done Loewe. This decision is apparently against the constitution of the United States, as the constitution says "in Congress alone is vested the power of creating laws," and also that "Congress shall not enact any law depriving the people of free speech or a free press or the right of peaceably assembling," and it is evidently a violation of the constitutional rights of the people when the Supreme Court issues such an order, when the power of creating laws is vested in Congress alone, and this decision is one that will meet with disapproval throughout the country as not justly applicable to trade unions. In the issuing of the recent injunction in the District of Columbia in relation to the Buck's Stove and Range Co., the rights of the people have been violated. Other decisions have also been rendered by other courts within the past few months in which the constitutional freedom of the people has been denied them. The members of any trade union who have associated themselves together, as we have always understood it, are fully within their constitutional rights, and in their organizations have the right to make such rules and regulations as will best protect their interests as workingmen. They have no commodity to sell outside of their labor, and it is hard to realize how they can be regarded as within the pale of the Sherman anti-trust law, as the, we don't patronize list," is but practically asking their friends. to refrain from assisting the enemies of their movement, and there is no tendency in such action to diminish trade, but on the contrary their efforts are to promote trade. I hope the Congress of the United States will now pass such measures as will make it impossible for the courts to issue such decisions depriving the people of their rights, and I believe that trade unions should be entitled to as much consideration as are capitalists, and any court decision denying the unions the right of informing their friends of the hostile attitude of any manufacturer is unwarranted. Such action on the part of the unions is no more in restraint of trade than is the action of any firm in the advertising of its business and soliciting trade an injury to its competitors. Daniel J. Keefe. Sixth Vice-President, American Federation of Labor. Relative to the decision of the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Loewe, the hat manufacturer, vs. The United Hatters of North America. We have simply to bow to the interpretation of the law and consider ways and means of amending the Sherman anti-trust act so that it will not apply to labor organizations. This is not such a difficult problem, if we go to work in earnest. If all the labor unions, in every congressional district in the United States, would hold meetings and insist on their representatives in Congress, irrespective of party affiliations, pledging to vote for an amendment to the Sherman anti-trust law that will exempt organized labor, it would be a good step in the right direction. Our union has begun the work, and we have received considerable encouragement. In my judgment we have the power in our own hands, if we but use it. However, this is a matter that requires prompt and effective action. To my mind this is an opportune time for showing what we can do, and my advice would be, whatever we decide to do, to do it promptly, and the desired result will be obtained. WHAT'S THE USE? By B. J. DUGGAN. What's the use, what's the use of the ceaseless endeavor? Now tottering on towards grim death's shoreless river, In the path they marked out in their youta's brighter day. No lesson for them in the roll of the ages, The same old routine from their birth to the grave; Unheeded by them was the lore of the sages, They fought against fate and fell under the glaive. What's the use, why indulge in these vain aspirations? What's the use, then, of struggling for ever and ever? That "all were born equal"-'twas only a phrase; What's the use, then, of fretting with futile persistence False councillor begone, not in vain has the struggle Prolonged though the fight, the road dark-however, Some gleams of the sunlight have flashed in between. Cast backward a glance o'er the path we have traveled, The tangles and skeins that our fathers unraveled Shall we then give up? Shall we wait for the morrow? A heritage leave to our sons to their sorrow, To think that their fathers had failed at the last. Ah, no! while there's life we will keep up the action, Till we've swept from the earth every vestige of faction, The fight may be long, but our fathers maintained it, On passing our sons at our hands will receive it, And they in their turn will then hand it along. The unions you frown on, God bless them, have proven EDITORIAL. By SAMUEL GOMPERS. On February 3, 1908, the Supreme Court issued the most drastic and far LABOR ORGANIZA- SUPREME COURT'S reaching decision which it has ever handed down. This decision directly affects all labor and hence the whole people. The case was that of the Loewe Co. against The United Hatters of North America. The court invokes the Sherman anti-trust law and under it decides that the Hatters are liable in damages according to the complaint of the Loewe Co. This action was first brought in the United States Circuit Court in the District of Connecticut, under section 7 of the Sherman anti-trust law. The lower court sustained the contention of the Hatters that they were not liable under the Sherman law. The Loewe Co. then carried the case by writ of error to the Circuit Court of Appeals. The Circuit Court desiring the instruction of the Supreme Court on the writ of error, put the question thus: Upon this state of facts can the plaintiffs (Loewe & Co.)* maintain an action against the defendants (Hatters) under section 7 of the Sherman anti-trust law of July 2, 1890. The plaintiffs and defendants then joined in the application to the Supreme Court to require the whole record and cause to be sent up for its consideration. This application was granted. The Supreme Court invoked not only section 7, but sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman anti-trust act, and declared that: "In our opinion the combination described in the declaration (United Hatters) was a combination in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states in the sense in which those words are used in the act and the action can be maintained accordingly." The decree also states: And that conclusion rests on many judgments of this court to the effect that the act (Sherman anti-trust) prohibits any combination whatever to secure action which essentially obstructs the free flow of commerce between the states, or restricts in that regard, the liberty of a trader to engage in business. The combination charged (boycott by Hatters) falls within the class of restraints of trade aimed at compelling third parties and strangers involuntarily not to engage in the course of trade except on conditions that the combination (Hatters) imposes. The sections of the Sherman anti-trust law upon which the decision is based are as follows: SECTION 1. "Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal. *Parentheses and italics are ours in this editorial Every person who shall make any such contract or engage in any such combination or conspiracy shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments in the discretion of the court. SEC. 2. "Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons to monopolize any part of trade or commerce among the several states or with foreign nations shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments in the discretion of the court." SEC. 7. "Any person who shall be injured in his business or property by any other person or corporation by reason of anything forbidden or declared to be unlawful by this act may sue therefor in any Circuit Court of of the United States in the district in which the defendant resides or is found, without respect to the amount in controversy, and shall recover threefold the damages by him sustained and the costs of suit, including a reasonable attorney's fee." We publish elsewhere in this issue the Supreme Court decision in full. The court attached the complaint of the plaintiffs' in the margin of the decision, and it also quotes from their complaint in the body of the decision. No more sweeping, far-reaching and important decision has ever been issued by the Supreme Court. The Dred Scott decision did not approach this in scope and importance, for it only decreed that any runaway slave could be pursued if he made his escape into a free state and his return compelled by all the powers of the government, to his owner to a slave state. Any person who assisted in the escape of a slave or who harbored him could be prosecuted before the courts for a criminal offense. That decision involved the few negro slaves who could make good their escape from a slave-holding state. The civil war annulled the decision of the Supreme Court and freed the slaves. It cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of brave men on both sides and emancipated from chattel slavery four millions of slaves. No man now proudly points to that famous Dred-Scott Supreme Court decision. The decision of the Supreme Court in the Hatters' case involves every worker and every sympathizer, with the ennobling work of the labor movement, of our land. A study of this momentous decision reveals some strange peculiarities. Outside of the opening paragraphs quoted above, the decision has very little other than the citation of cases which are held to illustrate and support it. There are references to injunctions granted under the Sherman anti-trust act and brief comment upon the citations, the decision gives an outline of the complaint incorrect in many particulars, especially in its summary of boycott proceedings by the Hatters. It quotes directly and at great length from the complaint (Loewe & Co.). The decision concludes thus: And then follows the averments (in Loewe complaint) that the defendants (Hatters) proceeded to carry out their combination to restrain and destroy interstate trade and commerce between the plaintiffs and their customers in other states by employing the identical means contrived for that purpose and that by reason of those acts plaintiffs were damaged in their business and property in some $80,000. We think a case within the statute was set up and that the demurrer should have been overruled. Judgment (of lower court) reversed, and cause remanded with a direction to proceed accordingly. Reference to the decision itself will show what precedents are quoted and what comments the court makes on them to show their alleged bearing on this case; but, in truth, not one of them in any degree parallels this case or sets any precedent that the layman can discover. The Hatters' defense of the boycott, their explanation and justification-for the boycott is admitted-appears nowhere in the decision. As the complaint of the plaintiffs (the Loewe Co.) is published in full with decision, it would seem only fair that the reply of the defendants (Hatters) should also have been reproduced. As it is, the complaint of the plaintiffs is apparently taken by the court as a true and correct account of what happened, though it is in reality full of the most glaring inaccuracies and mis-statements. We have not the space here to quote the complaint and point out its fallacies, but may do so in the future. When the court quotes from the complaint it includes its errors. Some of these we shall point out, for it is not right that what is destined to become so historic a decision should rest upon a faulty foundation of fact without protest. The court, quoting from the plaintiff's complaint, directly, says that defendants were— engaged in a combined scheme and effort to force all manufacturers of fur hats in the United States, including the plaintiffs, against their will, and their previous policy of carrying on their business, to organize their workmen in the departments of making and finishing in each of their factories into an organization, to be part and parcel of the said combination known as the United Hatters of North America, or as the defendants and their confederates term it, unionize their shops, with the intent thereby to control the employment of labor in and the operation of said factories, and to subject the same to the direction and control of persons other than the owners of the same, in a manner extremely onerous and distasteful to such owners, and to carry out such scheme, effort, and purpose, by restraining and destroying the interstate trade and commerce of such manufacturers, by means of intimidation of and threats made to such manufacturers and their customers in the several states, of boycotting them, their product and their customers, using therefor all the powerful means at their command as aforesaid until such time as, from the damage and loss of business resulting therefrom, the said manufacturers should yield to the said demand to unionize their factories. The Hatters had union agreements with 70 out of 82 hat manufacturers in the country. The Supreme Court says of this: That the conspiracy or combination was so far progressed that out of 82 manufacturers of this country engaged in the production of fur hats, 70 had accepted the terms and acceded to the demand that the shop should be conducted in accordance, so far as conditions of employment were concerned, with the will of the American Federation of Labor; that the local union demanded of plaintiffs that they should unionize their shop under the peril of being boycotted by this combination, which demand defendants declined to comply with; that thereupon the American Federation of Labor, acting through its official organ and through its organizers, declared a boycott. |