Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/193

Rh him to Washington as Solicitor-General, and introduced him to the whole American people. Mr. Taft's brief judicial experience had chanced to fall in a period when the labor field was in a state of unrest, and one case brought before him involved the right of a trade-union to boycott a firm which was not a party to any dispute, and whose sole offence lay in continuing to have dealings with an employer whose men had gone out on strike. The opinion he rendered was very broad, upholding the right of laborers to quit work in order to coerce their employer into paying higher wages, and of a trade-union to punish or expel its disobedient members; but on the other hand declaring unlawful a combination to injure the business of a stranger to the dispute, since such indirection obscured the original intent of the strike and became merely malicious and oppressive. The supreme court of Ohio sustained this decision on appeal without comment, and it is frequently quoted in labor cases to this day.

As second in command in the federal department of justice, Mr. Taft was given charge of the Sayward case, then before the United States supreme court. This was a suit brought by the Canadian ministry of justice to test the whole question of the authority claimed by the United States over sealing in Bering Sea, which had been the subject of a diplomatic wrangle lasting many