monoplies, and as such are in restraint of competition, but merely because strikes and boycotts have the effect of interfering in some degree with the free flow of goods from one state to another. This is, of course, what the labor interests wanted changed. It is not clear, however, that this section alters the law in this respect. cannot imagine that the courts will hold that the provision that neither labor organizations nor their members shall be "held or construed to be combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade" covers cases of this kind. If it does, a doubt as to the constitutionality of the section at once arises. It is true that the Supreme Court has recently held that a Missouri anti-trust statute is not in violation of the federal Constitution, despite the fact that the statute specifically exempts labor combinations. But with respect to the matter in hand the question would be whether an exemption of such interference with the "free flow of commerce" as comes from the activities of labor combinations would not amount to a denial of “due process of law" to the members of such other combinations as are condemned for similarly interfering with commerce. It is not a question of the legality of the restraint of competition among working-men. The question is whether labor combinations may restrain interstate commerce in goods while such restraint is not permitted to other combinations. There is, however, another provision in the Clayton act which may give labor combinations virtual immunity from the operations of the Sherman act. This section (the twentieth) prohibits the granting of injunctions by federal courts in labor disputes "unless necessary to prevent irreparable injury to property or to a property right," and specifies that such injunction shall not prohibit striking, picketing, or boycotting. This in itself does not prohibit civil suits for damages or criminal persecutions under the Sherman act. Probably it does not prohibit the granting of injunctions on the petition of the government, for the general provisions of the section. apply only to cases "between employers and employees." But, so far as the delimitation of the scope of the Sherman act is concerned, such considerations as these become unimportant in view of the fact that the section concludes with the sweeping statement, "nor shall any of the acts specified in this paragraph be considered or held to be violations of any law of the United States." This is the real exemption section. Its constitutionality is a matter about which there is some doubt, but its unconstitutionality is by no means assured. If the courts sustain it, labor unions will have been effectively freed from the restraints of the Sherman act. H. REVOLUȚIONARY UNIONISM Sabotage is: 312. Sabotage a) A Definition of Sabotage33 BY ARTURO M. GIOVANNITTI 1. Any conscious and wilful act on the part of one or more workers intended to slacken and reduce the output of production in the industrial field, or to restrict trade and reduce the profits in the commercial field, in order to secure from their employers better conditions or to enforce those promised or maintain those already prevailing, when no other way of redress is open. 2. Any skilful operation on the machinery of production intended not to destroy it or permanently render it defective, but only temporarily to disable it and put it out of running condition in order to make impossible the work of scabs and thus to secure the complete and real stoppage of work during a strike. Whether you agree or not, sabotage is this and nothing but this. It is not destructive. It has nothing to do with violence, neither to life nor to property. It is nothing more or less than the chloroforming of the organism of production, the "knock-out drops" to put to sleep and out of harm's way the ogres of steel and fire that watch and multiply the treasures of King Capital. b) Go Cannies BY ARTURO M. GIOVANNITTI It must be said with especial emphasis that sabotage is not and must not be made a systematic hampering of production, that it is ́not meant as a perpetual clogging of the workings of industry, but that it is a simple expedient of war, to be used only in time of actual warfare with sobriety and moderation, and to be laid by when the truce intervenes. The form of sabotage which was formerly known as Go Cannie consists purely and simply in "going slow" and "taking it easy" when the bosses do the same in regard to wages. "Adapted from the Introduction to Pouget's Sabotage, 13-14. Copyright by Charles H. Kerr & Co. (1913). Written in the Essex County Jail, Lawrence, Massachusetts. 34 Adapted from the Introduction to Pouget's Sabotage, 22-25. Copyright by Charles H. Kerr & Co. (1913). it out again in the form of minute instructions, giving to each worker only the knowledge needed for the mechanical performance of a particular relatively minute task. This process, it is evident, separates skill and knowledge even in their narrow relationship. When it is completed the worker is no longer a craftsman in any sense, but is an animated tool of the management. He has no need of special craft knowledge or craft skill, or any power to acquire them if he had, and any man who walks the streets is a competitor for his job. There is no body of skilled workmen today safe from the one or the other of these forces tending to deprive them of their unique craft knowledge and skill. Only what may be termed frontier trades are dependent now on the all-round craftsman. These trades are likely at any time to be standardized and systematized and to fall under the influence of this double process of specialization. The problem thus raised is the greatest one which organized labor faces. For if we do not wish to see the American workmen reduced to a great semi-skilled and perhaps little organized mass, a new mode of protection must be found for the working conditions and standards of living which unionism has secured, and some means must be discovered for giving back to the worker what he is fast losing in the narrowing of the skill and the theft of his craft knowledge. It is another problem which the organized workmen must solve for themselves and society. G. UNIONISM AND THE ANTI-TRUST LAWS 309. The Monopoly of Labor27 To the House of Representatives: I return, without my approval, the bill (H. R. 28775,) being "An act making appropriations for the sundry civil expenses of the Government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1914, and for other purposes." My reasons for failing to approve this important appropriation bill are found in a provision which has been added to that appropriating $300,000 for the enforcement of the anti-trust laws in the following language: "Provided, however, That no part of this money shall be spent in the prosecution of any organization or individual for entering into any combination or agreement having in view the increasing of wages, shortening of hours, bettering the condition of labor, or for 27 Adapted from the President's message of March 3, 1913, vetoing the Civil Appropriations Bill. any act done in furtherance thereof not in itself unlawful: Provided, further, That no part of this appropriation shall be expended for the prosecution of producers of farm products and associations of farmers who co-operate and organize in an effort to and for the purpose to obtain and maintain a fair and reasonable price for their products." This provision is class legislation of the most vicious sort. If it were enacted as substantive law and not merely as a qualification upon the use of monies appropriated for the enforcement of the law, no one, I take it, would doubt its unconstitutionality. A similar provision in the laws of the State of Illinois was declared by the Supreme Court to be an invasion of the guarantee of the equal protection of the laws contained in the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution of the United States," although the only exception in that instance from the illegality of organization and combinations, etc., declared by that statute, was one which exempted agriculturists and live-stock raisers in respect to their products or live stock in hand from the operation of the law leaving them free to combine to do that which, if done by others, would be a crime against the State. The proviso is subtly worded, so as, in a measure, to conceal its full effect, by providing that no part of the money appropriated shall be spent in the prosecution of any organization or individual "for entering into any combination or agreement having in view the increasing of wages, shortening of hours, or bettering the condition of labor," and so forth. So that any organization formed with the beneficent purpose described in the proviso might later engage in a conspiracy to destroy by force, violence, or unfair means any employer or employee who failed to conform to its requirements; and yet, because of its originally avowed lawful purpose, it would be exempt from prosecution, so far as prosecution depended upon the money appropriated by this act, no matter how wicked, how cruel, how deliberate the acts of which it was guilty. So, too, by the following sentence in the act such an organization would be protected from prosecution "for any act done in furtherance" of the "increasing of wages, shortening of hours, or bettering the condition of labor" not in itself unlawful. But under the law of criminal conspiracy acts lawful in themselves may become the weapons whereby an unlawful purpose is carried out and accomplished.29 Connelly v. United Sewer Pipe Co., 184 U. S. 540. 20 Shawnee Compressed Coal Co. v. Anderson, 209 U.S. 423-434; Aikens v. Wisconsin, 195 U.S. 194–206; Swift v. United States, 196 U.S. 375-396; United States v. Reading Co., 226 U.S. 324. An amendment almost in the language of this proviso, so far as it refers to organizations for the increasing of wages, etc., was in troduced in the Sixty-first Congress, passed the House, was rejected in the Senate, and after a full discussion in the House, failed of enactment. Representative Madison, speaking in favor of the amendment which struck out the proviso, characterized it as an attempt to "write into the law, so far as this particular measure is concerned, a legalization of the secondary boycott. The laws of the country," he pointed out, "are liberal to the workingman. He can strike, he can agree to strike, and he can apply the direct boycott, but when it comes to going further and so acting as to impede and obstruct the natural and lawful course of trade in this country, then the law says he shall stop. And all in the world that this anti-trust act does is to apply to him that simple and proper rule, that he, too, as well as the creators of trusts and monopolies, shall not obstruct the natural and ordinary course of trade in the United States of America." "I believe," he added, "in the high aims, motives, and patriotism of the American workingman, and do not believe that, rightly understanding this amendment, they would ask us to write it into the law of this Republic."30 It is because I am unwilling to be a party to writing such a provision into the laws of this Republic that I am unable to give my assent to a bill which contains this provision. WILLIAM H. TAFT 310. The Charter of Industrial Freedom31 BY SAMUEL GOMPERS The Sherman anti-trust law was repeatedly used against organizations of workers on the ground that they were combinations in illegal restraint of trade. The injunctive process was employed to prevent all such "combinations" from carrying out their legitimate. purposes. There was no relief in sight. Rather these perversions of the real purpose of the law were becoming habitual tactics in industrial disputes and established as precedents in legalism. The judicial philosophy upon which these practices were based harked back to the olden days when the workers were villeins or serfs. Then their bodies and their labor power were the property of the masters or feudal overlords. The labor of a human being, 30 Congressional Record, 61st Cong., 2d sess., 8850. 31 81 Adapted from an article with the above caption in the American Federationist, XXI, 962-963, 971-972 (1914). |