Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 20.pdf/455

 342

THE GREEN BAG

character that the combination among the engineers employed on roads other than the one complained of by its engineers was a boycott and therefore unlawful. The view expressed in this case has not only received the approval of the courts and the public generally, but the attorney for the Railroad Brotherhoods in the Wabash case (121 Fed. Rep. 563), Mr. Frederick N. Judson of St. Louis, says (and it is well known), "was accepted by the Railroad Brotherhoods as a fair statement of the law under the peculiar conditions of the railroad service." The Cincinnati Southern Railroad was in the hands of a receiver appointed by the United States Circuit Court. The receiver was under contract with the Pullman Com pany to operate its cars. Phelan and others, officers of the American Railway Union, for the purpose of injuring the Pullman Com pany and compelling it to accede to their demand for higher wages for certain persons, its employees but not employed by the receiver or by any other railroad, conspired to prevent the receiver and the owners of other railroads from using Pullman cars in the operation of their roads by inciting members of the Railway Union employed by the receiver to refuse to handle Pullman cars. The testimony showed clearly that Phelan was engaged in a conspiracy "to incite the employees of all of the railways in the coun try to suddenly quit their service, without any dissatisfaction with the terms of their employment, thus paralyzing utterly all railway traffic in order to starve the railway companies and the public into compelling an owner of cars used in operating the roads to pay his employees more wages, they having no lawful right to compel him." Judge Taft held this to be a boycott and an unlawful conspiracy at common law, and also that such a combination, its purpose being to paralyze the interstate commerce of the country, was within the provisions of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. It is very interesting to note that the

Supreme Court of the United States (Loewe v. Lawlor, 28 Supreme Court Rep. 301, February, 1908), have recently held that a boycott of that kind came within the inhibi tion of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act as a conspiracy in restraint of interstate com merce. Judge Taft showed that a boycott of this character has been held to be illegal by every court in which the question has arisen, and his exposition of the rights of employees is accepted as a clear declaration of the law on the subject. In denning their rights he said, with much else that was pertinent, they "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 a benefit to them and to the public that laborers should unite in their common interest and for lawful pur poses. They have labor to sell. If 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 interest of the single employee may compel him to accept any terms from him. . . . They have a right to appoint officers who shall advise them as to the course to be taken by them in their relations with their employer. 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 any one, he may order them, on pain of expulsion from the union, peaceably to leave the employ of their employer because any of the terms of their employment are unsatisfactory." It is from the decisions in the Ann Arbor case and the Phelan case that the misguided zeal of political opponents has tried to dis cover in Judge Taft an unfriendliness to organized labor as such. No fair-minded man, acquainted with these cases and with the Addyston Pipe case, and with Judge Taft's entire career, will entertain the thought for a moment. Mr. Judson has