oercion is not present when an employer
orces an employe either to sign an agree-
nent to leave a union or leave his job.
'In view of the relative position of employer
nd employed," he declared, "who is to
leny that the stipulation here insisted upon
nd forbidden by the law is essentially coer-
ive? No forms of words can strip it of its
rue character."

The Adair case was distinguished from he Kansas case on the ground that in the ormer, the statute in question prevented he employer from discharging a worker n account of his connection with organized abor. The Kansas statute prevented an mployer from forcing an agreement that he worker at no future time during his emloyment shall join a union. Although a tate might not be able to prevent an emloyer from discharging a worker because he esorted to the courts for redress, the justice eld, it could prevent him from requiring is workers to agree never in the future to ring such an action to court.

Justice Day was also of the opinion that he court would have decided otherwise than t did if a similar law had been passed to rotect employers in their legal associations. He said:

"An analogous case, viewed from the employer's tandpoint, would be: Can the state, in the exercise f its legislative power, reach concerted effort of mployes intended to coerce the employer as a contion of hiring labor that he shall engage in writing o give up his privilege of association with other emloyers in legal organizations, corporate or othervise, having for their object a united effort to pronote by legal means that which employers believe o be for the best interest of their business?"

We can not help but feel with the dissenting justices that the Kansas statute was a legitimate exercise of the police power of the state; that in inquiring into the motives of the legislature, the court unduly interfered with the legislative function; that, in concentrating on the alleged rights of the employer, it interfered unduly with those of the worker, and that the legislature can reasonably step in to lessen gross inequalities of position under the police power of the state. While we also agree that there is a real distinction between the Kansas statute and the Erdman provision lealt with in the Adair case, difference or no difference, the constitutionality of the former statute should have been sustained.

If the judges really desired to protect "liberty of contract"-and that be more than a meaningless phrase-one is forced to the conclusion that they were by their decision defeating their own ends. As Justice Holmes well points out, liberty of contract is impossible unless there is some degree of equality of position between the contracting parties. Dependent for work on those who own the machinery of industry; forced for the most part to accept a mere subsistence wage through fear of the competition of the man out of work; financially weaker than the employer and lacking the latter's knowledge of the art of bargaining; unacquainted with the condition of his employer's exchequer; with but one commodity to sell-and that the most perishable of all-labor power, the individual wageearner in our modern competitive system is in no real sense on an equality with the employing class, and all talk of liberty of contract between him and the employer generally indicates a naïve conception of things as they are. Only through organization can liberty of contract be secured. A statute which protects the worker in his organization, far from interfering with contractual freedom, is likely to help in making such freedom a possibility.

Granting, however, for the sake of argument, that in a technical sense, freedom of contract was interfered with by the Kansas statute, does it require a great stretch of the imagination on the part of those conversant with the industrial struggle, to conceive of such a statute as being legitimately intended to subserve the public welfare, and thus as being within the police power of the state? Will not the great majority of students of present conditions testify to the fact that organized labor has, for the most, conserved the general welfare, that it has raised the standard of living of tens of thousands of workers and has greatly developed their potentialities through associated life and struggle? Is it not time for more of our judges to follow the lead of such men as Justice Holmes, and occasionally to apply legal formula to present day facts? Is it not time for them, when rendering their decisions, to keep in mind the thought of the Illinois judge: "What we know as men we can not be unmindful of as judges?"

"The labor power of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce."

EDITORIALS

By

SAMUEL GOMPERS

"The labor power of a human being is not a commodity or article of com

SEAMEN

FREED-THEIR

EMANCIPATOR

merce." Labor power is life. Human life is sacred. The human body is the temple of that sacred something that gives men dignity, greatness and goodness. As this concept of the sacredness of human life lays hold of men, they revolt at the desecration which human slavery sanctions. Yet for twentyfive years the seamen of the United States have been asking their freedom at the hands of Congress, because only law can remedy the defects of law.

With the passing of the centuries one after another class of slaves has won freedom until only one group of workers remained, the sailors, the last of the bondmen. The sailors the world over labored under contracts enforcible by imprisonment. The sailors of the United States gave up the rights of manhood when they signed papers to sail on privately owned vessels. They were powerless to control freedom, wages or conditions of work.

Yet there were among American sailors those whose minds were free though their bodies were their masters. Their spirits chafed in the bitterness of injustice.

Sailors were not in a position to get their wrongs before the nation. They were away, isolated, deprived of ordinary recourses of wronged citizens. Occasionally the world heard of the hardships of their lot, and sometimes heard stories of cruelty and brutality that seemed scarcely human. But nothing was done.

About twenty-five years ago there came ashore a representative of these sailors, a leader who holds freedom sacred. There have been few men who feel more keenly the meaning of freedom or understand more thoroughly what constitutes freedom. He spoke the language of freedom and the intensity of his heart's desire burned those words into the minds of men. His earnestness was his power. With epigrammatic force he coined the terms with which to describe the seamen's bondage and to interpret their ideals. No greater state paper has been written than the Decay of Seamanship. It voices the yearning of a human soul that men might have freedom and life.

He had caught the spirit of the old Norse sea kings who pitted the brain and brawn of their manhood against the forces of the sea, who knew no masters but accepted freedom or death. But law had chained the sailors to the boats. Like the serfs of old, their labor belonged to their masters and they might not at will leave their vessels even when in safe harbor.

This unfreedom resulted in the decline of seamanship. Wages were wered. Whenever better opportunities opened up, the able, virile men who

had followed sea now turned inland. The places were taken by those whose spirits and whose standards of life did not make them revolt at the wages and conditions which were the lot of seamen.

It has been the mission of Andrew Furuseth to restore to the seamen their ancient heritage of freedom and to restore free men to the high seas.

It is not given to every man to see his life's work crowned by victory, but Andrew Furuseth is among those to whom has been permitted that great gratification. On March 4, 1915, President Wilson signed the seamen's bill-an act to promote the welfare of American seamen, to promote safety at sea, and to abolish arrest and imprisonment as a penalty for desertion and to secure the abrogation of treaty provisions in relation thereto.

This is a law of international significance. It makes the soil of America sacred land upon which no bondman may set foot without losing his fetters.

The seamen's legislation not only frees American seamen on American soil but in all of the ports of the world, and bestows the same freedom upon the seamen of every vessel coming into American ports. The law abolishes the imprisonment penalty that previously could be imposed upon all seamen for quitting work on his vessel in a foreign port, and releases American consuls from their obligations to act as "slave catchers" for American ships in foreign ports. All parts of treaties which provide for the arrest and imprisonment of sailors and officers quitting foreign merchant vessels in American ports are abolished.

The legislation provides for the regulation of hours of work and of the payment, allotment and attachment of wages. It establishes better and specific standards regulating the living quarters of the sailors and the provisions for their personal comfort and welfare. It requires better provisions for the safety of all on board the vessel. Under the new legislation seamen have the right to demand an inspection of the vessel to test its seaworthiness.

But the important change that has a revolutionary possibility is the section concerned with the qualifications of the sailors who man the vessels. The qualifications for able seamen demand that those into whose hands is placed the safety of the human lives on the vessel, shall have skill, efficiency, resourcefulness. These are qualities of free men. This part of the law means that Americans will return to service on the sea, a service in which they earned great fame, and will again. Freedom, better conditions, possibilities for increased betterment will establish American standards necessary for American seamen. The seamen's law, known for years as Andrew Furuseth's bill, is one of the great acts of legislation. It makes sacred those human rights which are the very heart of human freedom.

The American Federation of Labor very materially and effectively aided in the years of effort to secure the enactment of the seamen's bill; its officers contributed their fullest support. In the Bill of Grievances formulated by the great conference of the officers of international unions in Washington, 1906, the demand for the seamen's bill was given a conspicuous place. But all said and done it is only a just appreciation to say that to Andrew Furuseth is due the honor and the glory not only for the great triumph, but for the

terrific contest. And what a contest it was is scarcely in the power of any one to tell.

The Seamen's Act has a rightful place among those really important American legislative acts that dedicated our soil to freedom. It belongs along with the emancipation proclamation of Lincoln and the legislative declaration of Congress, "That the labor power of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce."

REMEDY
STATE

INJUNCTION
ABUSE

An injunction issued by the Superior Court of Cook County, Illinois, emphasizes the necessity for the enactment in all states of laws to regulate and to limit within the states the issuance of injunctions in industrial disputes. The janitors struck for better conditions. The milk drivers were drawn into the strike. The employers applied to a friendly court for assistance in defeating the strike. The court gave most timely and generous assistance. Everybody who knew anything about the strike was ordered to boycott the janitors' strike and to desist from anything that would in any degree assist them in their efforts to secure better conditions.

By the Chicago injunction the court presumes to command the janitors' union, the milk drivers' union and all persons who may be assisting them or who may have knowledge of what they are doing, to desist and refrain absolutely from doing the following acts which the judge deemed contrary to equity and good conscience:

From picketing or patrolling in the vicinity of buildings, or where supplies are taken into the buildings. From organizing or even attempting to organize or maintain, or engage in a boycott against either the occupants of the buildings or any one who might do business with them or from influencing or even attempting to influence firms to be neutral in the janitors' strike. Note that the judge includes intentions under the purview of his custodianship of good conscience. Moreover, no one may call or even threaten to call a strike that would be helpful to the janitors' cause.

With whole hearted zeal to help the employers of janitors the court clothes his command in terms of world-wide application-no one may molest, intimidate, annoy, interfere with, injure, hinder, stop or obstruct firms who do business or seek to do business or ordinarily might do business with complainants, for the purpose of lending aid or comfort to the janitors.

But the judge had not yet reached the limit of his ingenuity in isolating the janitors. He commanded that there be no spying or system of espionage upon the buildings, their occupants or any persons delivering goods there.

Then to make the measure of his zeal full to overflowing the court commanded that no printed or other matter be exhibited or distributed that would arouse sympathy for the janitors among those delivering supplies, seeking to deliver supplies or who ordinarily might deliver supplies to the occupants of the buildings designated.

It would be hard to imagine assumption of more sweeping authority than that of the Superior Court of Cook County in its injunction to co-operate with employers to defeat the purposes of the janitors.

That injunction demonstrates the imperative necessity for immediate legislation to regulate and limit the use of injunctions in those relations over which the states have jurisdiction as the labor sections of the Clayton Antitrust act regulate and limit the use of injunctions in relations which come under federal jurisdiction.

State legislation is necessary to supplement federal legislation to assure workers industrial justice in all employments.

The Philadelphia Convention instructed the Executive Council to draw up such amendments as might be deemed necessary to make the Massachusetts injunction law a model to be recommended to all affiliated organizations for enactment by the various state legislatures.

The following is the text of the proposed law which the Executive Council recommends:

Be it Enacted, Etc.:

SECTION 1. It shall not be unlawful for working men and women to organize themselves into, or carry on labor unions for the purpose of lessening the hours of labor or increasing the wages or bettering the condition of the members of such organizations; or carrying out their legitimate purposes as freely as they could do if acting singly.

SECTION 2. No restraining order or injunction shall be granted by any court of this state, or any judge or judges thereof in any case involving or growing out of a dispute concerning terms or conditions of employment, unless necessary to prevent irreparable injury to property or to a property right of the party making the application, for which injury there is no adequate remedy at law, and such property or property right must be described with particularity in the application, which must be in writing and sworn to by the applicant or by his agent or attorney.

SECTION 3. No restraining order or injunction shall prohibit any person or persons, whether singly or in concert, from terminating any relation of employment or from ceasing to perform any work or labor; or from recommending, advising or persuading others so to do; or from attending at any place where any person or persons may lawfully be, for the purpose of obtaining or communicating information, or from persuading any such person to; work or to abstain from working; or from ceasing to patronize any party to such dispute; or from recommending, advising, or persuading others so to do; or from paying or giving to, or withholding from, any person engaged in such dispute, any strike benefits or other moneys or things of value; or from assembling in a lawful manner, and for lawful purposes; or from doing any act or thing which might lawfully be done in the absence of such dispute by a single individual; nor shall any of the acts specified in this section be considered or held to be illegal or unlawful in any court of this state.

SECTION 4. That the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce; and the right to enter into the relation of employer and employe, or to change that relation; or to assume and create a new relation for employer and employe; or to perform and carry on business with any person in any place; or to do work and labor as an employe, shall be held and construed to be a personal and not a property right. In all cases involving the violation of the contract of employment, either by the employe or employer where no irreparable damage is about to be committed upon the property or property right of either, no injunction shall be granted, but the parties shall be left to their remedy at law.

SECTION 5. No persons shall be indicted, prosecuted, or tried in any court of this state for entering into or carrying on any arrangement, agreement or combination between themselves made with a view of lessening the number of hours of labor or increasing wages or bettering the condition of workingmen, or for any act done in pursuance thereof, unless such act is in itself forbidden by law if done by a single individual.