other end of the economic structure. I think they should have that treatment, and am willing to do all I can to give it to them. But why they should have more than that I fail to see. I am just as much opposed to creating a privileged class out of the organizations specified in this amendment as I have always been to creating a. privileged class out of organizations of capital. One practice is just as vicious as the other.

The Webb amendment goes to the length of saying that a monopoly or a restraint of trade shall not be indulged in by any kind of organization except those specified in the amendment. In determining what organizations or what kinds of organizations come or should come within the antitrust laws, the true test to apply is not what is the organization, one involving capital or one involving labor, but the true test is what does the organization do. Does it restrain commerce or not; is it a monopoly or is it not.

If a 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 undesirable and is illegal, as it is declared to be by the Sherman law, it is so no matter who the person or what the organization may be that is involved. Can it be that a restraint of trade or a monopoly or conspiracy to that effect is bad where a corporation for profit is the actor involved but is perfectly harmless and quite proper where a labor union or a farmers' organization is the one involved? If monopolies or conspiracies in restraint of trade are a bad thing, they are a bad thing, no matter by whom, no matter by what kind of an organization they are fostered. To prohibit them by legislation except where they are perpetrated by labor or fraternal organizations or farmers' associations or the members thereof is as clear an example of unwarranted class legislation as can be furnished.

It is mere folly to contend that simply because labor is a human attribute and capital is a mere inanimate thing that combinations of those who deal solely in the former ought not to be hampered in such acts as operate to restrain trade while those who deal in the latter commodity ought to be prohibited from doing any acts having such a tendency.

Again I say, if restraint of trade and monopoly and conspiracy to that end are wrong, what matters it whether that restraint is brought about by the manipulation of that which is a human attribute or that which is an inanimate thing? The antitrust laws relate to combinations of persons, not of capital nor of labor as such, and to certain acts by those persons. Capital in itself can do nothing, nor can labor. It is with the owners and the manipulators of these things and the way in which those owners use these things as distinguished from the things themselves that the laws should have to do.

But this amendment says that these laws shall not apply to these persons so long as the thing that they use and manipulate to restrain trade is a human attribute-labor-and that all such persons shall be exempt from the operation of the law. If the Webb amendment had specified certain proper acts and kinds of acts usually engaged in by such organizations as are named in the amendment, and which are now prohibited by a strict construction of the antitrust laws, and had provided

that they might be legally done notwithstanding the antitrust laws, I would have supported the amendment.

It is the acts proper in themselves that should have been excepted from the operation of the antitrust laws, and the laws, with the exceptions adopted, should apply to everybody and eyery kind of organization. But in excepting certain organizations and classes of individuals from the operation of the law not only acts proper in themselves, such as a peaceful strike, are legalized, but acts not proper in themselves, such as a secondary boycott, are legalized.

I am opposed to any exemption which has such an effect or which might be so construed, and therefore I did not support the Webb amendment, and I also voted against the MacDonald and Thomas amendments.

47139-13483

О

On the Provision of the Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill Affecting the Sherman Antitrust Law.

SPEECH

OF

HON. CHARLES E. TOWNSEND,

OF MICHIGAN,

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES,

May 5, 1913.

The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, had under consideration the bill (H. R. 2441) making appropriations for sundry civil expenses of the Government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1914, and for other purposes.

Mr. TOWNSEND. Mr. President, I feel that it is my duty to protest against the provision in this bill limiting the appropriation for administering the antitrust law by prohibiting the Department of Justice from using any part of it for enforcing that law against labor unions and farmers' associations. No labor or farmers' organization has asked me to permit it to do an illegal thing; no one has written me a word in reference to the matter, except that I received a letter from the head of the American Federation of Labor indorsing the provision of the bill in so far as it applies to labor organizations, and a circular letter this morning from a lawyer of this city who assumed to speak for farmers.

I am opposed to the provision because it is a vain thing, so far as the enforcement of the antitrust act against the organization sought to be exempted is concerned. There are other funds which the Department of Justice can use to enforce this law impartially. The proposed action is not the most direct and honest way to proceed, even if it is desirable to treat the employer and the employed differently, so far as combinations in restraint of trade are concerned. The fair, open, and just way is to amend the Sherman Act directly and not through the circumlocution of restricting the use of an appropriation.

But if the limitation of the appropriation before the Senate is vain, why is it proposed and why do I oppose it?

It is vain so far as the impartial enforcement of the Sherman law at present is concerned, but it furnishes an opportunity for some statesmen to go on record as favoring a strong political class of our people without making its results particularly effective. Some there are who honestly and sincerely believe in the proposition to exempt labor organizations from the operation of the antitrust law, and they take advantage of this opportunity to express their approval of this provision with the hope that it will eventually lead to an amendment of the general law.

I am opposed to it because I believe it is largely a matter of politics, and bad politics at that.

I am opposed to it because I am a friend of labor organizations; and being a friend, I am opposed to injuring them by passing class legislation nominally for their benefit but eventually for their detriment. The laborer of all men is vitally interested in just and impartial law.

This measure proceeds on the declared assumption that American labor is a class, and implies that its members have no hope of getting out of it into the so-called employer class. Nothing could be more hopeless or more unjust than this, if it is or shall be true. All labor does not get its just dues. It has not had an even chance in the great struggles of the past. It is even now working under great handicaps, not least of which are some of its exploiters, who for financial or political reasons find it exceedingly useful. To relieve labor from some of its burdens should be the honest effort of every good citizen in and out of Congress, and it is comforting to know that a great majority of the people sympathize with labor in its struggle for its rights and for its proper share of the wealth which it creates. I believe most heartily in organized labor. If I were a laborer, as the term goes, I would, if possible, belong to a union, and I would try to make membership in that union stand for worth and character, and all I would ask would be equal opportunity under equal law, and I would insist that there should be no impassable wall separating employer and employee.

I would resist all efforts from without or from within my order to shut the door of advancement against me and my fellows. It is one of the glories of our country that a great majority of our men of affairs, of our public men, of our great men in every department of life, have come up through the ranks of labor and from the very bottom of the line. We should not change this by enacting a law which recognizes the principle that labor is a class which should be treated differently from the way the employer is treated.

Under existing conditions the strike is sometimes beneficial and sometimes apparently necessary, but this admission simply emphasizes the imperfection of men in their search of remedies for existing injustice because the strike is wasteful at best, and principles are seldom established by it. It seems, however, to be the only means now recognized. How much better, as it seems to me, it would be to have a commission, such as I have tried to secure for years, to make public the causes which now induce to strikes, for public sentiment would then be founded on facts instead of prejudice, and public sentiment would control, and the controversies would be settled justly. Honest labor has nothing to fear from publicity.

But we must not lose sight of the fact that a great majority of laborers do not belong to unions. Shall this Government tie its hands so that it can not protect the rights of the unorganized? Shall we subdivide labor into the organized and unorganized and have a special law for each? Certainly not. Conspiracies may exist and have existed not alone against the employer, but they have sometimes been more powerful against unorganized labor.

It is possible that the antitrust act has been invoked in some cases both against employers and labor organizations where

action should not have been entertained, but such cases have been most rare, and there is no danger under present public sentiment that such decisions will be followed as precedents.

Every lawful right of labor should be safeguarded to the very limit, and labor has no better friend than I am. Indeed, it is because I am in sympathy with the toiler for one reason that I object to this kind of privileged class legislation which may lead to his injury.

Nothing illustrates the political character of this proposed provision better than the fact that farmers' organizations are included in it. Have these organizations petitioned for this? Is there anything which farmers' associations are doing or which they are proposing to do which is now unlawful? I have heard of nothing of that kind. The farmers are law abiding as a class and want no special legislation which is not for the common good. Then why have they been linked with labor organizations in this provision? There can be but one answer, and that is politics. If the farmers could be induced to believe that the antitrust law is inimical to them, their moral and political influence would be powerful in the passage of this class legislation; furthermore, it adds some strength to the provision by associating with it the farmers of the country. The class is thus made larger. I have heard no argument from the proponents of the measure in behalf of farmers who are now suffering because of their inability to do any just thing. I doubt if any Senator has received complaint from any real farmers or bona fide farmers' organizations.

Does any Senator believe that any employer could long endure if he resisted the known just and proper demands of his employees? But how shall we know whether the demands are just and proper? Will a resort to the test of endurance between capital and labor through the medium of the strike furnish the needful information? Will the sympathetic strike or the boycott settle permanently any great principle? Is it right that the great mass of the people who are served by railroads and mines and factories shall suffer irreparable injuries while some captain of finance and some labor leader are fighting for supremacy?

Shall we say that any influence shall be permitted to coerce men into breaking contracts with which they are satisfied, into leaving employers against whom they have no grievance, in order to settle the differences existing between other men with whom they have no relation? Would the advocates of this measure support another amendment exempting from the operation of the trust statute employers banded together to blacklist the workmen of any one industry and to prevent the employment of all laborers until the proscribed workmen accede to their employers' demands?

Mr. President, the black list and the boycott, the sympathetic strike, and all methods of direct or indirect intimidation are undemocratic and should be un-American. The differences of capital and labor will never be permanently adjusted through methods which are not at once approximately just between them and fair to the great mass of the people who constitute the Republic and furnish the opportunity and safeguard the rights of both employer and employee. The pending proposition will result