What Our Organizers Are Doing.

NATIONAL SECRETARIES.

Barbers.-General Secretary W. E. Klapetzky, Barbers' International Union, reports that since his last statement, seven charters have been issued by him, in Birmingham, Ala.; Kewanee and Pontiac, Ill.; Fort Worth, Tex.; Ottumwa, Ia.; Paterson, N. J.; and Vancouver, B. C. An application for a charter from Mishawaka, Ind., is under consideration, and many others are expected in the near future from places where temporary organizations have been formed. Seventy-five per cent. of the local unions report an increase in membership. He further reports that many central bodies have admitted to their councils barbers' organizations not affiliated with the International Union. Wherever this occurs, the central body

near future. One organizer will be appointed for each large city to assist in the organization of new unions, the strengthening of those already in existence and to induce employers to use the union label. An aggressive campaign will be conducted against the sweat bake-shops. The bakers have difficulties pending in Buffalo, N. Y., against the U. S. Baking Company; in Rochester, N. Y., against Deminger Bros.; in Cleveland, Ohio, against the Ohio Baking Company; in Newark, N. J., against the Fritche Baking Company; in Hoboken, N. J., against the Schmalz & Son Company; and in Boston, Mass., against the Fox Pie Baking Company; all of said difficulties being on account of the employment of non-union help. No great improvements in conditions have been reported, except that the Juliu Excelsior Bakery of Cleveland, O., has unionized its establishment and is using

MONTANA

山

ARIZONA

INTER-MOUNTAIN

WYOMING

LAKE SUPERIOR

ONTARIO

QUEBEC

SOUTH DAKOTA

WISCONSIN

KENTUCKY

VIRG

VIRGINIA

PENN

NEW YORK

MIDDLE

MARYLAND

JERSEY

CONNI

ARKANSAS

VI

TEXAS

LOUISIANA

FLORIDA

OCEAN

ATLANTIC

A. F. OF L. ORGANIZING DISTRICTS

DISTRICT LINES. STATE LINES

should at once take steps to bring about affiliation in accordance with the laws of the American Federation of Labor.

Bakers.-General Secretary F. H. Harzbecker, Bakers and Confectioners' International Union, reports that five local unions have been granted charters since the headquarters were removed to Cleveland one month ago. The new unions are located in Fort Worth, Tex.; Baltimore, Md.; St. Louis, Mo.; Dallas, Tex.; and Cleveland, Ohio. The action of the executive board in changing the official organ from a monthly to a weekly meets with general approval. In accordance with a resolution adopted by the late convention, a number of national organizers will be placed in the field in the

both the bread and cracker labels. All boycotts of the American Federation of Labor are being pushed, especially against the U. S. Baking Company. The Bakers International Union recognizes its indebtedness for good work done by the following organizers of the American Federation of Labor: Organizer U. M. Lee, Ft. Worth, Tex., Organizer J. H. Sullivan, Baltimore Md., and Organizer L. P. Negele, of St.Louis, Mo. Each of the foregoing have organized locals in their respective cities, and Organizer Negele gives information that he expects to get the candy makers of his city also in line. He further reports that the bread label is more in demand than ever before.

(Continued on page 196.)

Organized labor has claimed and continues the claim; the right to use the boycott. On the other hand, its opponents, and particularly the newspapers, have not ceased denouncing the boycott as an unlawful, aggressive, un-American, intolerable, mode of warfare. There are several court decisions, though none from any of the ultimate courts of appeal, in which the same view is taken. One or two judges have upheld the boycott, and even in the anti-boycott opinions certain significant admissions may be noted which, we will presently show, logically surrender the whole case against the practice in question. No fairminded man will deny that the subject is an open one, and it is therefore profitable and proper to review the controversy and state labors' view of the matter.

What is the boycott? There is, fortunately no reason for any difference upon the right definition of the term. In Anderson's Law Dictionary, a boycott is defined as "A combi

nation between persons to suspend or discontinue dealings or patronage with another person or persons, because of a refusal to comply with a request of him or them. The purpose is to constrain acquiescence or to force submission on the part of the individual, who, by non-compliance with the demand, has rendered himself obnoxious to the immediate parties, and perhaps to their personal and fraternal associates."

The first question to be answered is whether the criminal laws of the United States or of the several component States, plainly, directly and unequivocally declare "a combination between persons to suspend patronage"-the essence of the definition-to be illegal. The answer is a negative one. There is no law in any State or in the nation forbidding any or all combinations to discontinue dealings with obnoxious persons.

In connection with the pending boycott operations in New York and Ohio, it has been acknowledged (though not without regret on the part of some) that in neither of the great States named is boycotting a statutory offense. Indeed it would be impossible to frame a law rendering all forms of boycotting criminal. No one has ventured to advance so absurd and monstrous a proposal, and the courts themselves have had to recognize the perfect legitimacy of at least one form of boycotting. Thus, Judge Spring, of New York, whose decision in the Buffalo Express case, rendered a year or so ago, has recently been given wide publicity on account of its supposed strength, lucidity and thoroughness, distinctly declared:

"The labor organizations had the right to refuse to patronize the Express, or to give support to any patron of that paper."

If words have meaning this sentence establishes the legality of boycotting. We must bear in mind that the difficulty with the Express involved a number of separate organizations

-compositors, pressmen, stereotypers-and that they all acted in concert as members of the Buffalo Allied Printers' Unions. If these unions had the right to boycott-that is, discontinue dealings with the Express and all its patrons, it can only be because a combination of any number of men having community of interest to boycott an obnoxious person or persons is not unlawful. So far, then, as the aggrieved workmen were concerned, there was no issue. Judge Spring conceded, then, the right to boycott the Express and its patrons, or advertisers and readers.

Can it be contended that the New York judge went too far and erred on the side of laxity or generosity to the boycotters? Not with any show of reason. Any other view is nonsensical on its face. NEITHER THE Express

NOR ITS PATRONS HAD ANY VESTED CLAIM OR RIGHT TO THE PATRONAGE OF THE STRIKERS. The strikers were free to bestow their

patronage upon whom they pleased, and none could call upon them to assign reasons for their preferences. They were not obliged to purchase the Express, nor were they under obligations to deal with the merchants who used the advertising pages of the newspaper. We take it, therefore, that any court would feel itself bound to affirm the principle laid down in the sentence quoted from Judge Spring's opinion. And that sentence, we repeat, establishes the propriety and legality of simple, passive boycotting by people having a common grievance against one or more persons, even if that grievance be wholly imaginary or trivial..

At what point, then, does boycotting become criminal and a combination to suspend dealings pass into a conspiracy? This is the crucial question.

The Buffalo Express case being typical, we may continue to use it as the basis for our argument. The offense of the boycotters, according to Judge Spring, consisted in thisthat they did not limit the combination to members of allied printers' unions, who were directly interested in the dispute, but proceeded to enlist all other labor unions "in Buffalo" in the common undertaking to root out the Express or to coerce it into assenting to the domination of this union. The "other" labor unions joined in the boycott and passed resolutions refusing to patronize the paper and its advertisers, and a special organ was established to push the company and spread the boycott. The consummation of this "scheme," the judge says, was not "insidious but open, defiant and unmistakable." In other words, the original boycotters, who acted within their right in suspending their dealings with the Express and its advertisers, openly appealed, requested and urged others, not concerned in the difficulty, to become parties to the boycott.

Now, for the sake of simplicity, assume first that this "open and defiant" appeal was accompanied by no threats of any kind. Let us assume that the original boycotters limited themselves to moral suasion and, in the name of such principles as the solidarity of labor, the justice of the demand for fair wages, the economic advantage of strong labor organizations, and so on, they merely requested and exhorted other workmen, and elements in sympathy with labor, to join in their boycott, would such a course be unlawful? appeals and arguments are successful and extend the boycott to outsiders, do we have a case of criminal conspiracy? Are the appellants also guilty of any wrongdoing, and are those who respond to the appeal guilty of some sort of crime?

If such

There is nothing in law or morality to warrant affirmative answers to these queries. There are no decisions upon the hypothetical

point raised. We may take it for granted, however, that the most rabid anti-boycott agitator will not venture to assert that boycotters may not resort to moral suasion in trying to enlist others or that outsiders may not heed boycotters' appeals, and of their own free will suspend dealings with the persons or firms that had incurred the displeasure of their friends, associates or patrons. Strikers have the right to appeal to their friends to aid them by going out on a sympathetic strike, and that their friends have the right to act upon such an appeal. Precisely the same principle applies to boycotters. A sympathetic boycott is as legal and legitimate as a sympathetic strike. Just as men may strike for any reason, or without reason at all, so may they suspend dealings with merchants or others for any reason or for no reason at all. Thus a boycott may extend to an entire community without falling under the condemnation of any moral or constitutional or statutory law.

But we shall be triumphantly told: Boycotters never do confine themselves to moral suasion and appeal; that they resort to threats, intimidation and coercion, and it is this which makes what is called "compound boycotting" that is, boycotting which extends to parties not concerned in the original dispute, criminal and aggressive. Under the criminal code of New York and other States, it is a criminal conspiracy to prevent a person or persons "from exercising a lawful trade or calling, or doing any other lawful act, by force, threats, intimidation, or by interfering, or threatening to interfere, with tools, implements or property, or with the use and employment thereof." Boycotters who try to coerce people into complying with their demands by threats and intimidation clearly come within the definition of conspiracy. Hence, in the last analysis, the objection to boycotting is an objection to threats and intimidations.

This sounds very plausible. It is easy to deduce from such premises that boycotters interfere with property rights and the pursuit of lawful callings, and that under the national and State constitutions, to say nothing about explicit anti-conspiracy laws, they are to be held civilly and criminally liable. It is easy to talk about protection of property rights, the tyranny of preventing people from earning a livelihood, the duty of the Government to secure the equal protection of the laws, etc.

But this argument about the employment of threats and intimidation is fallacious and superficial. Its apparent validity disappears when, not satisfied with ugly-looking words, we demand precise definitions. No one pretends for a moment that it would be proper for a boycotter to approach a merchant and say: "You must join us in suspending all dealings with that employer or newspaper or

advertiser on pain of having your house set on fire, or of a physical assault." This would be an unlawful threat and people who try to enlist others in their campaign by threats of this character would certainly be guilty of a criminal conspiracy.

Do boycotters use such threats? Do they contend for the right to employ force or threats of force? Our worst enemies do not contend that they do. They "threaten," but what do they threaten? They "intimidate," but how? Let Judge Taft, who issued his sweeping anti-boycott injunction be a witness on this point. He said:

"As usually understood, a boycott is a combination of many to cause a loss to one person by coercing others against their will to withdraw from him their beneficial interests through threats that unless those others do so, the many will cause similar loss to them."

This, then, is the threat, this the intimidation. The boycotters threaten third parties to boycott, then, if they refuse, to join in the boycott of the original subjects of the campaign. In other words, the boycotters say to the "others": If you decline to aid us in our struggle, we will suspend dealings with you and transfer our custom to those who do sympathize with us and will support us. The question which the judges and editors who glibly denounce boycotting have never paused to explain, how a mere threat to suspend dealings can be a criminal threat, like a threat to assault person or property. No man in his senses will dispute this axiomatic proposition, namely, that a man has a right to threaten that which he has a right to carry out. You may not threaten murder, arson, assault, battery, libel, because these things are crimes or torts. But you may threaten to cease admiring him or taking his advice, because he has no claim to your admiration or obedience, and you are at liberty to cease doing that which you have freely and voluntarily done. Similarly you may tell a man that if he does a certain thing, you will never speak to him or call at his house. This is a threat, but it is a threat that you have a right to make. Why? Because you have a right to do that which you threaten.

The same thing is strictly true of boycotting -of suspension of dealings with merchants, publishers, carriers, cabmen and others. You may threaten to take your custom away from them and assign any reason you choose. They are not entitled to your custom as a matter of legal or moral right, and you are at liberty to withdraw and transfer it any time and for any conceivable reason. It follows beyond all question, that you have a perfect right to threaten to withdraw your custom. The principle is the same whether you threaten one man or a hundred men, whether you are alone in threatening the withdrawal of your custom or a

member of a vast combination of people acting together in the premises.

Is not the result coercion of men to do certain things against their will? Very likely, but not all forms of coercion are criminal. Coercion is another term with an ugly and ominous sound which is freely used to intimidate the thoughtless. The legality or illegality of coercion depends on the method used. A man may be coerced by actual force, by the threat of force, or by indirect means which the law can not and does not prohibit. Coercion by a threat to suspend dealings, is, to revert to our illustration, in the same category with coercion through a threat to cease friendly intercourse.

With this elementary principle in mind, the case against the boycott utterly collapses. An agreement to boycott any number of persons is not a criminal conspiracy, and, a fortiori, an agreement among any number to threaten a boycott can not be a criminal conspiracy. Let us consider briefly a few of the propositions and pseudo arguments which we find in judicial pronouncements upon the subject.

In a New York case it was said: "The word in itself (meaning the term, boycott) implies a threat." Granted, but what kind of a threat? A threat to boycott. To say that boycotting is criminal because the word boycott implies a threat to boycott is truly extraordinary reasoning. It is worse than reasoning in a vicious circle. It is an attempt at proving a less doubtful proposition by assuming a more doubtful one to be indisputably true. Further in the same case: "In popular acceptation it (the boycott) is an organized effort to exclude a person from business relations with others by persuasion, intimidation and other acts which tend to violence (!) and they coerce him, through fear of resulting injury, to submit to dictation." We have already exposed the question-begging and superficial use of the terms, intimidations, coercions and threats, but the insinuation that threats of boycotting "tend to violence" is particularly gratuitous and absurd.

Why does boycotting or the threats of boycotting tend to violence? What connection is there between suspending dealings and violence? To suspend dealings is every man's right; to use violence, save in self defense, no man's.

In another New York case we read: “A conspiracy to injure a person's business by threatening persons from entering his employment, by threats and intimidation, is a crime at common law." How clear and forcible! What does "threatening persons by threats" mean? Leave out the terrifying and favorite word "threat" and the proposition is this: It is a crime to injure a person by telling others that if they do not discontinue dealings with him, dealings with them will be discon

tinued." It is quite possible that this was a crime under the old common law. An agreement to strike for higher wages was a crime in the early days of our Government, under the common law. The common law was vague, obscure, and, as interpreted in less enlightened days, tyrannical. The common law as to strikes has been abandoned, and it will have to be abandoned as to the boycott.

Men have a right to do business, but this is one-half of the truth. The men with whom business is done have a right to withdraw and transfer their custom. This is the other half, which is always ignored in anti-boycott arguments. Keep the two halves in view and boycotting on any scale and for any reason becomes a direct, unavoidable deduction.

Labor claims the right to suspend dealings with any and all who refuse to support what it considers its legitimate demands. The decisions are confused, and the question is new, but ultimately the right of any man to do with his patronage what he pleases must be recognized.

Workmen have a right to say that they will not patronize those who are unfriendly to them and those who support their adversaries. This is all that boycotting implies. There is no aggression here; no criminal purpose, and no criminal way of accomplishing a proper purpose.

A WORD ON TRUSTS.

We are all conscious of the giant strides with which industry during the past decade has combined and concentrated into the modern trust. There is considerable difference of opinion, however, as to what is regarded by many as an intolerable evil.

Organized labor is deeply concerned regarding the "swift and intense concentration of the industries," and realizes that unless successfully confronted by an equal or superior power there is economic danger and political subjugation in store for all.

But organized labor looks with apprehension at the many panaceas and remedies offered by theorists to curb the growth and development or destroy the combinations of industry. We have seen those who knew little of statecraft and less of economics urge the adoption of laws to "regulate" interstate commerce and laws to "prevent" combinations and trusts, and we have also seen that these measures, when enacted, have been the very instruments employed to deprive labor of the benefit of organized effort, while at the same time they have simply proven incentives to more subtly and surely lubricate the wheels of capital's combination.

For our part, we are convinced that the state is not capable of preventing the legitimate development or natural concentration of indus

try. All the propositions to do so which have come under our observation would beyond doubt react with greater force and injury upon the working people of our country than upon the trusts.

The great wrongs attributable to the trusts are their corrupting influence on the politics of the country, but as the State has always been the representative of the wealth possessors we shall be compelled to endure this evil until the toilers are organized and educated to the degree when they shall know that the State is by right theirs, and finally and justly come to their own, while never relaxing in their efforts to secure the very best possible economic, social and material improvement in their condition.

There is no tenderer or more vulnerable spot in the anatomy of trusts than their dividend paying function, there is no power on earth, other than the trade unions which wields so potent a weapon to penetrate, disrupt, and, if necessary, crumble the whole fabric. This, however, will not be necessary, nor will it occur, for the trade unions will go on organizing, agitating and educating, in order that material improvement may keep pace with industrial development, until the time when the workers, who will then form nearly the whole people, develop their ability to administer the functions of government in the interest of all.

There will be no cataclysm, but a transition so gentle that most men will wonder how it all happened.

In the early days of our modern capitalist system, when the individual employer was the rule under which industry was conducted, the individual workmen deemed themselves sufficiently capable to cope for their rights; when industry developed and employers formed companies, the workmen formed unions; when industry concentrated into great combinations, the workingmen formed their national and international unions, as employments became trustified, the toilers organized federations of all unions-local, national and internationalsuch as the American Federation of Labor.

We shall continue to organize and federate the grand army of labor, and with our mottoes, lesser hours of labor, higher wages, and an elevated standard of life, we shall establish equal and exact justice for all. "Labor Omnia Vincit."

In reply to many inquiries it is necessary to say that the clothing manufacturing firm of Oehm & Co., of Baltimore, Md., is not entitled to the use of the union label of the organization of the trade, the United Garment Workers of America, owing to the fact that this company refused to conform to union conditions, particularly in the matter of abolishing the sweat shop system of manufacture. We