Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/194

 172 methods had considerably abated under the influence of the convictions of unionists for exceeding legal limits. There is indeed nothing in the report to show that the old method of picketing by sandwich-men and bill distributors had been again resorted to, and it is probable that the unions confined themselves to methods of publishing the boycott in which no display of force was made.

There can, however, be no doubt that in the United States the industrial boycott exists to an extent of which we have no experience in this country. There is not wanting evidence to show that the major portion of the boycotts in New York were more the work of foreigners than of workers of English descent, who seem inclined to fight out their battles in the old-fashioned way rather than resort to a weapon, which, by ruining a local trade, may leave them to scatter in search of work over other districts to which the trade has gone. The industrial boycott as we know it here seldom takes place except as an accessory to the strike. The few exceptional cases of which we have knowledge have only arisen quite recently under the auspices of some of the new unions which insist upon the employment of union labour only. So far, that is a policy which has not met with decided success, and there are not wanting signs that, as trade falls off, it is a policy which will have to be altogether abandoned.

The usual British strike boycott aims only at preventing the employer obtaining other men, or from getting his work done at other places, but we are almost entirely strangers to that form of trade interdict which aims at compelling the surrender, or ruin of an obstinate employer by stopping the sale of his goods. A couple of years ago the London bakers during their movement for shorter hours of work made a few demonstrations after the American style but were not very successful. The London Boot and Shoemakers also tried the same policy while engaged in an attempt to compel employers to provide workshops for their employés.

Other isolated cases may he found, but it is extremely doubtful if we have had a single case in which all the unions have seriously combined to prevent the sale of an employer's goods. In America, as has been remarked, it has chiefly been successful where the article boycotted was one of general consumption by the mass of the people, and in instances where the case of the workmen has been so strong that public sympathy has been sufficiently enlisted in their favour to cause the great body of consumers to refrain from buying the productions of the firms denounced.