Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/459

CAMPAIGN AGAINST GERMAN ORGANIZED LABOR 445 be expelled with infamy from his official rank. In a word, in all classes and strata of society use may be made of the ban as a perfectly permissible weapon in social or economic life. Only when a laborer employs it as a means of assistance in his struggle for wages does it suddenly become a crime that must be punished with imprisonment. Again, threats are not liable to legal penalty in the case of an action permissible in itself. Only threats in instigation of crime are punishable with imprisonment up to six months. In this law, however, all threats employed in a strike for the purpose of inducing another to take part are made punishable. The case is not very different with offenses against honor. This condition of the special law was considerably strengthened by the new statute. In two directions it goes beyond the existing provisions of the law; it proposes first, to raise the limit of penalty, and, second, to extend the area of punishable offenses. Instead of imprisonment up to three months, these offenses in future, according to this law, shall be punishable with imprisonment up to a year, or, if extenuating circumstances are present, with a fine to the limit of a thousand marks. The maximum penalty is accordingly increased fourfold. Of house of correction, to be sure, to which the Kaiser alluded in the speech referred to, there is little said in the law. In only one passage is this word found, as we shall see below. In this respect we might, indeed, in the first moment, be agreeably disappointed, since we read only of imprisonment up to one year. If we, however, reflect what sort of people they are who will be affected by this law, the one year of imprisonment will appear to be an enormous punishment.

One is much more astonished, however, at discovering how extraordinarily the circle of punishable offenses is extended by the proposed law. Hitherto, as we have said, offenses of the kind mentioned are only punishable beyond the provisions of general criminal law in case they are committed for the direct purpose of instigating another to participation in agreements to strike, or in attempts to restrain from breaking such agreements. Even in such cases the extension of the law is with the limitation that the agreement to strike is made "for the purpose of