specific written prohibitions of our Constitution. The comparison is strikingly illustrated by a statement from the present British ambassador in his notable work on the American Commonwealth, and one by Mr. Justice Harlan in his dissent in the case of Robertson v. Baldwin (165 U. S.). Mr. Bryce says: The British Parliament has always been, was then, and remains now a sovereign and constituent assembly. It can make and unmake any law, change the form of government or the succession to the Crown, interfere with the courts of justice, and extinguish the most sacred and private rights of the citizen. (American Commonwealth, vol. 1, p. 32.) * * * What are called in England constitutional statutes, such as Magna Charta, the bill of rights, the act of settlement, the acts of union with Scotland and Ireland, are merely ordinary laws, which could be repealed by Parliament at any moment in exactly the same way it can repeal the highway act or lower the duty on tobacco. Parliament can abolish when it pleases any institution of the country, the Crown, the House of Lords, the established church, the House of Commons, Parliament itself. (Vol. 1, pp. 237-238.) Commenting on the essential difference between the power of Parliament and that of Congress, Mr. Justice Harlan said: * * * No such powers have been given to or can be exercised by any legislative body organized under the American system. Absolute arbitrary power exists nowhere in this free land. The authority for the exercise of power by the Congress of the United States must be found in the Constitution. Whatever it does in excess of the powers granted to it, or in violation of the injunction of the supreme law of the land, is a nullity and may be so treated by every person. If the Parliament of Great Britain, her Britannic Majesty assenting, should establish slavery or involuntary servitude, the courts would not question its authority to do so, and would have no alternative except to sustain legislation of that character. A very short act of Parliament would suffice to destroy all the guaranties of life, liberty, and property now enjoyed by Englishmen. LEGAL DISABILITIES OF BRITISH TRADE UNIONS. The same Parliament which possesses and exercises the power to except one class of combinations from the uniform operation of the law likewise possesses and exercises the power to place exceptional disabilities upon their members. their members. British trade-unions may not hold property nor act through trustees except they be registered under the trade-union act of 1871-1876, and it has been frequently decided that these acts are, as it were, the charter of combination for a registered trade-union, and it can exercise no power not therein authorized. While it is true that by the statute a union may not be refused registration merely because "some of its objects or by-laws are in restraint of trade," it has been again and again held that where an examination of the constitution and by-laws of a union reveals the fact that some of its purposes or methods are of such weight and importance as to dominate the course of the union's action, or if lawful and unlawful purposes and methods are so intermingled as to render them inseparable, the organization is refused registration. This principle is represented in such cases as Cullen v. Edwin (1903, 88 1. T., 686), the same (1904, 90 L. T., 840), Russell v. Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (81 L. J. K. B., 619). In this country every trade-union may remain a purely voluntary organization and enjoy the fullest and freest rights of political activity. In Great Britain the registered trade-union can not lawfully apply its funds for the maintenance of members of Parliament to represent its interests (Amalgamated Society of Railroad Servants v. Osborne, 1909), and as a corollary a trade-union may not levy con tribution to secure representation on municipal and other local bodies other than boards of guardians. This decision in express terms leaves it an open question whether the Osborne case does not even apply to the administration of funds for parliamentary and municipal elections where the money is voluntarily subscribed by members of the union. (Wilson v. Amalgamated Society of Engineers, 2d Ch., Mar. 24, 1911.) AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR NOT ENTITLED TO REGISTER It must be apparent to the committee that American labor organizations would not accept the criminal and civil disabilities of the British law in company with its privileges. We furthermore submit to this committee that if the constitution of the American Federation of Labor, together with a copy of its by-laws, were filed to secure the registration of that organization under the terms of the trade-union act of 1871-1876, as interpreted by the English courts, that body would not be entitled to registration, for the Federation pleaded in the Supreme Court of the United States That the constitution of said American Federation of Labor makes special provision for the prosecution of boycotts when instituted by cor stituent or affiliated organizations. And— That under the provisions of said constitution many so-called boycotts have been and several are now being prosecuted. * * * (Petition of American Federation of Labor, intervenors, Loewe v. Lawler, October term, 1907, No. 389, p. 2.) The boycott has always been held in England to represent either an unlawful combination or a criminal conspiracy, according to the circumstances of the case. Injunctions have been continually issued against it, perhaps the most illustrative case being Temperton v. Russell (1893, 1 Q. B., 815). Who can, therefore, doubt that a constitution making "special provision for the prosecution of boycotts would introduce a dominating illegal element that would cause the organization in question to be refused registration? We submit that the English legislation, as a system, would neither be accepted by those who urge it in part, without understanding its whole, nor is its policy of conferring special legal privileges upon a class in one kind of a controversy permissible under our form of government. IV. OF THE LEGITIMATE RIGHTS LABOR ORGANIZATIONS HAVE BEEN FULLY RECOGNIZED BY THE COURTS OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE PRINCIPLES APPLIED BY FEDERAL COURTS OF EQUITY TO RESTRAIN CERTAIN ACTIVITIES ARE THOSE WHICH HAVE BEEN AND ARE APPLICABLE TO EVERY COMBINATION SEEKING SIMILAR ОBJECTS AND EMPLOYING SIMILAR MEANS IN THEIR EXECUTION. THE REMEDY BY INJUNCTION IS AN INHERENT PART OF THE JUDICIAL POWER IN EQUITY, AND ITS EXERCISE IS CONSTITUTIONALLY GUARANTEED TO THE CITIZEN POSSESSING NO ADEQUATE REMEDY AT LAW AND THREATENED WITH IRREPARABLE DAMAGE TO RIGHTS OF A PECUNIARY NATURE. It is persistently represented to this committee and to the general public in support of this and similar legislation that its enactment is essential to secure from courts of the United States the recognition of rights violated by the application of the injunctive process upon principles not recognized in other than labor controversies. RIGHT OF ASSOCIATION, COLLECTIVE CONTRACT, AND QUITTING FULLY RECOGNIZED BY FEDERAL COURTS. We submit that the leading decisions controlling the courts of the United States vindicate every right which workmen in combination may exercise with due regard for the rights of others, and things prohibited to them have been so prohibited upon no principle other or different from that applied to all other associations of men under the same circumstances. Mr. Justice Harlan thus vindicates the right of collective quitting: If in good faith and peaceably they exercise their right of quitting the service, intending thereby only to better their condition by securing such wages as may seem just, but not to injure or interfere with the free action of others, they can not be legally charged with any loss to the trust property resulting from their cessation of work in consequence of the refusal of receivers to accede to the terms upon which they are willing to remain in the service. Such a loss under the circumstances stated would be incidental to the situation and could not be attributed to employees exercising lawful rights in orderly ways. * * * We have said that if employees were unwilling to remain in the service of the receivers for the compensation prescribed for them by the revised schedules it was the right of each one on that account to withdraw from such service. It was equally their right without reference to the effect upon the property or upon the operation of the road, to confer with each other upon the subject of the proposed reduction in wages and to withdraw in a body from the service of the receivers because of the proposed change. * * * The right of an employee engaged to perform personal service to quit that service rests upon the same basis as the right of his employer to discharge him from further personal service. If the quitting in the one case or the discharging in the other is in violation of the contract between the parties, the one injured by the breach has his action for damages, and a court of equity will not indirectly or negatively, by means of an injunction restraining the violation of the contract, compel the affirmative performance from day to day or the affirmative acceptance of merely personal services. (Arthur v. Oakes, 63 Fed., 319.) As a still broader recognition of the rights of labor organizations, we have this: Now, it may be conceded in the outset that the employees of the receiver had the right to organize into or to join a labor union which should take joint action as to their terms of employment. It is of benefit to them and to the public that laborers should unite in their common interest and for lawful purposes. They have labor to sell. They stand together; they are often able, all of them, to command better prices for their labor than when dealing singly with rich employers, because the necessities of a single employee may compel him to accept any terms offered him. The accumulation of a fund for the support of those who feel that the wages offered are below market prices is one of the legitimate objects of such an organization. They have the right to appoint officers who shall advise them as to the course to be taken in their relations with their employers. They may unite with other unions. The officers they appoint, or any other person to whom they choose to listen, may advise them as to the proper course to be taken by them in regard to their employment, or, if they choose to repose such authority in anyone, may order them, on pain of expulsion from their union, peaceably to leave the employ of their employer because any of the terms of their employment are unsatisfactory. It follows, therefore (to give an illustration which will be understood), that if Phelan had come to this city when the receiver reduced the wages of his employees by 10 per cent, and had urged a peaceable strike, and had succeeded in maintaining one, the loss to the business of the receiver would not be ground for recovering damages, and Phelan would not have been liable to contempt, even if the strike much impeded the operation of the road under the order of the court. (Thomas v. Cincinnati, 62 Fed., 817.) In Waterhouse v. Comer (55 Fed., 149) District Judge Speer directed the receiver of the Central Railroad of Georgia to enter into a trade agreement with the railway union against the receiver's objection. In a most recent decision of the Supreme Court it declares: Society itself is an organization, and does not object to organizations for social, religious, business, and all legal purposes. The law, therefore, recognizes the right of workingmen to unite and to invite others to join their ranks, thereby making available the strength, influence, and power that come from association. By virtue of this right powerful labor unions have been organized. All combination by virtue of its aggregate strength, unified action, and purpose possesses powers and capacity for good or evil beyond that of its individual components. This power when unlawfully used against one can not be met except by his purchasing peace at the cost of submitting to terms which involve the sacrifice of rights protected by the Constitution or by standing on such rights and appealing to the preventive powers of a court of equity. (Bucks Stove & Range Co. v. Gompers, 221 Ú. S., 420.) If the truth of this last paragraph is more frequently exemplified by proceedings against combinations of labor it must be because they more frequently give opportunity for its exemplification. PRINCIPLES APPLIED BY COURTS TO LABOR DISPUTES SAME AS IN ALL OTHER CONTROVERSIES. The committee will further perceive that the principles upon which our courts proceed is not peculiar to labor controversies, although necessarily the remedy must be shaped to meet their circumstances. Mr. Gompers, sneering at the judicial view of the "sacredness" of contracts and criticizing the issuance of injunctions to prevent their breach, declared: There has never been one suit brought to my knowledge and, as a consequence, never one dollar recovered by an association of workmen as against employers for breach or violation or the termination of a contract or joint bargains or collective bargains. No layman, no lawyer, I think, can show one case where such a suit was brought, or, if brought, there was a recovery. (Gompers hearing, pt. 2, p. 56.) New York long since established the principle in Jacobs v. Cohen (183 N. Y., 207) that the courts of that State would enforce a contract sounding in liquidated damages to enforce a closed-shop agreeIn that case the employer's note for $200 given as security for the keeping of the contract was collected by the union in this ment. proceeding, and any other union of that State in similar circumstances possesses a like remedy. This committee knows, as every lawyer and most laymen know, that for an individual or a combination to endeavor to procure a breach of contract by compulsion, persuasion, or any other means is unlawful. That principle is as old as the common law and is enforced in controversies of every character. If the principle is frequently applied in labor controversies, it is because the record is filled with the plainest evidence that securing breaches of contract as a means of compelling an employer to accept the conditions demanded by a union is a method sanctioned and continuously practiced by labor combinations. The same reasons cover every case where one person maliciously persuades another to break any contract with a third person. It is not confined to contracts of service. (Jones v. Stanley, 76 N. C., 355-quoted with approval—Angle v. C. & St. P., etc., 151 U. S., 14.) The same principle which condemns the boycott as a combination "aimed at compelling third parties and strangers involuntarily not to engage in the course of trade except on conditions that the combination imposes" (Loewe v. Lawler, 208 U. S., 300) is exemplified in a like proceeding in which business men composed the conspiracy, a number of tile dealers combining to prevent the purchase or sale of tiles by any save those who were members of the combination. (Montague v. Lowry, 193 U. S., 38.) The boycott is not condemned because the parties engaged therein are members of labor organizations or parties to a trade dispute, but because their purpose, the malicious injury of a third person, is unlawful upon its very statement. The boycott is merely one kind of a conspiracy and calling it by any other name or introducing it in any new controversy can neither better its morality nor remove the ban of the law. ANTIQUITY OF CONDEMNATION OF BOYCOTT. A record of the Selden Society for 1877 exhibits an application for legal relief from a boycott as early as 1221, in the case of The Abbott of Lileshall v. Bailiffs of Shrewsbury, in which it appears: The Abbott of Lileshall complains that the bailiffs of Shrewsbury do him many injuries against his liberty, and that they have caused proclamations to be made in the town that none be so bold as to sell any merchandise to the abbott or his men upon the pain of forfeiting 10 shillings, and that Richard Peache, the bedell of the said town, made this proclamation by their orders, and the bailiffs defend all of it, and Richard likewise defends all of it, and that he never heard of any such proclamation made by anyone. It is considered that he do defend himself 12 handed (with 11 compurgators) and do come on Saturday with his law. 66 Translating defend" as "deny," you observe the abbott complaining that the bailiffs, by combination, do injury against his liberty. He claims the right to have trade flow unobstructed and to deal freely with his fellows and is injured by combination which, for some purpose of its own, has undertaken to penalize any person who deals with him. They have caused proclamations to be made," the ancient form of the modern "We-don't-patronize list," the "Bedell" performing the functions committed to the distinguished president of the American Federation of Labor in our day. Being conscious of the illegality of the combination, you will observe the participants |