Notwithstanding Powderly's exhortations, the Order was at first slow in taking it up. In 1882 a general cooperative board was elected to work out a plan of action, but it never reported, and a new board was chosen in its place at the Assembly of 1883. In that year, the first practical step was taken in the purchase by the Order of a coal mine at Cannelburg, Indiana, with the idea of selling the coal at reduced prices to the members. Soon thereafter a thorough change of sentiment with regard to the whole matter of cooperation took place, contemporaneously with the industrial depression and unsuccessful strikes. The rank and file, who had hitherto been indifferent, now seized upon the idea with avidity. The enthusiasm ran so high in Lynn, Massachusetts, that it was found necessary to raise the shares of the Knights of Labor Cooperative Shoe Company to $100 in order to prevent a large influx of "unsuitable members." In 1885 Powderly complained that "many of our members grow impatient and unreasonable because every avenue of the Order does not lead to cooperation."
The impatience for immediate cooperation, which seized the rank and file in practically every section of the country, caused an important modification in the official doctrine of the Order. Originally it had contemplated centralized control under which it would have taken years before a considerable portion of the membership could realize any benefit. This was now dropped and a decentralized plan was adopted. Local organizations and, more frequently, groups of members with the financial aid of their local organizations now began to establish shops. Most of the enterprises were managed by the stockholders, although, in some cases, the local organization of the Knights of Labor managed the plant.
Most of the cooperative enterprises were conducted on a small scale. Incomplete statistics warrant the conclusion that the average amount invested per establishment was about $10,000. From the data gathered it seems that cooperation reached its highest point in 1886, although it had not completely spent itself by the end of 1887. The total number of ventures probably reached two hundred. The largest numbers were in mining, cooperage, and shoes. These industries paid the poorest wages and treated their employes most harshly. A small amount of capital was required to organize such establishments.
With the abandonment of centralized cooperation in 1884, the role of the central cooperative board changed correspondingly. The leading member of the board was now John Samuel, one of those to whom cooperation meant nothing short of a religion. The duty of the board was to educate the members of the Order in the principles of cooperation; to aid by information and otherwise prospective and actual cooperators; in brief, to coordinate the cooperative movement within the Order. It issued forms of a constitution and by-laws which, with a few modifications, could be adopted by any locality. It also published articles on the dangers and pitfalls in cooperative ventures, such as granting credit, poor management, etc., as well as numerous articles on specific kinds of cooperation. The Knights of Labor label was granted for the use of cooperative goods and a persistent agitation was steadily conducted to induce purchasers to give a preference to cooperative products.
As a scheme of industrial regeneration, cooperation never materialized. The few successful shops sooner or later fell into the hands of an "inner group," who "froze out" the others and set up capitalistic partnerships. The great majority went on the rocks even before getting started. The causes of failure were many: Hasty action, inexperience, lax shop discipline, internal dissensions, high rates of interest upon the mortgage of the plant, and finally discriminations instigated by competitors. Railways were heavy offenders, by delaying side tracks and, on some pretext or other, refusing to furnish cars or refusing to haul them.
The Union Mining Company of Cannelburg, Indiana, owned and operated by the Order as its sole experiment of the centralized kind of cooperation, met this fate. After expending $20,000 in equipping the mine, purchasing land, laying tracks, cutting and sawing timber on the land and mining $1000 worth of coal, they were compelled to lie idle for nine months before the railway company saw fit to connect their switch with the main track. When they were ready to ship their product, it was learned that their coal could be utilized for the manufacture of gas only, and that contracts for supply of such coal were let in July, that is nine months from the time of connecting the switch with the main track. In addition, the company was informed that it must supply itself with a switch engine to do the switching of the cars from its mine to the main track, at an additional cost of $4000. When this was accomplished they had to enter the market in competition with a bitter opponent who had been fighting them since the opening of the mine. Having exhausted their funds and not seeing their way clear to securing additional funds for the purchase of a locomotive and to tide over the nine months ere any contracts for coal could be entered into, they sold out to their competitor.
But a cause more fundamental perhaps than all other causes of the failure of cooperation in the United States is to be found in the difficulties of successful entrepreneurship. In the labor movement in the United States there has been a failure, generally speaking, to appreciate the significance of management and the importance which must be imputed to it. Glib talk often commands an undeserved confidence and misleads the wage earner. Thus by 1888, three or four years after it had begun, the cooperative movement had passed the full cycle of life and succumbed. The failure, as said, was hastened by external causes and discrimination. But the experiments had been foredoomed anyway,—through the incompatibility of producers' cooperation with trade unionism. The cooperators, in their eagerness to get a market, frequently undersold the private employer expecting to recoup their present losses in future profits. In consequence, the privately employed wage earners had to bear reductions in their wages. A labor movement which endeavors to practice producers' cooperation and trade unionism at the same time is actually driving in opposite directions.
[20] See Chapter 1.
[21] In the thirties the term "union" was reserved for the city federations of trades. What is now designated as a trade union was called trade society. In the sixties the "Union" became the "trades' assembly."
[23] See below, 285-290, for a discussion why American labor looks away from legislation.
[24] The Constitution read as follows: "It alone possesses the power and authority to make, amend, or repeal the fundamental and general laws and regulations of the Order; to finally decide all controversies arising in the Order; to issue all charters.... It can also tax the members of the Order for its maintenance."
[26] The "local assemblies" generally followed in practice trade lines, but the district assemblies were "mixed."
The Great Upheaval of 1886 had, as we saw, suddenly swelled the membership of trade unions; consequently, during several years following, notwithstanding the prosperity in industry, further growth was bound to proceed at a slower rate.
The statistics of strikes during the later eighties, like the figures of membership, show that after the strenuous years from 1885 to 1887 the labor movement had entered a more or less quiet stage. Most prominent among the strikes was the one of 60,000 iron and steel workers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the West, which was carried to a successful conclusion against a strong combination of employers. The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers stood at the zenith of its power about this time and was able in 1889, by the mere threat of a strike, to dictate terms to the Carnegie Steel Company. The most noted and last great strike of a railway brotherhood was the one of the locomotive engineers on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company. The strike was begun jointly on February 27, 1888, by the brotherhoods of locomotive engineers and locomotive firemen. The main demands were made by the engineers, who asked for the abandonment of the system of classification and for a new wage scale. Two months previously, the Knights of Labor had declared a miners' strike against the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company, employing 80,000 anthracite miners, and the strike had been accompanied by a sympathetic strike of engineers and firemen belonging to the Order. The members of the brotherhoods had filled their places and, in retaliation, the former Reading engineers and firemen now took the places of the Burlington strikers, so that on March 15 the company claimed to have a full contingent of employes. The brotherhoods ordered a boycott upon the Burlington cars, which was partly enforced, but they were finally compelled to submit. The strike was not officially called off until January 3, 1889. Notwithstanding the defeat of the strikers, the damage to the railway was enormous, and neither the railways of the country nor the brotherhoods since that date have permitted a serious strike of their members to occur.
The lull in the trade union movement was broken by a new concerted eight-hour movement managed by the Federation, which culminated in 1890.
Although on the whole the eight-hour movement in 1886 was a failure, it was by no means a disheartening failure. It was evident that the eight-hour day was a popular demand, and that an organization desirous of expansion might well hitch its wagon to this star. Accordingly, the convention of the American Federation of Labor in 1888 declared that a general demand should be made for the eight-hour day on May 1, 1890. The chief advocates of the resolution were the delegates of the carpenters, who announced a readiness to lead the way for a general eight-hour day in 1890.
The Federation at once inaugurated an aggressive campaign. For the first time in its history it employed special salaried organizers. Pamphlets were issued and widely distributed. On every important holiday mass meetings were held in the larger cities. On Labor Day 1889, no less than 420 such mass meetings were held throughout the country. Again the Knights of Labor came out against the plan.
The next year the plan of campaign was modified. The idea of a general strike for the eight-hour day in May 1890, was abandoned in favor of a strike trade by trade. In March 1890, the carpenters were chosen to make the demand on May 1 of the same year, to be followed by the miners at a later date.
The choice of the carpenters was indeed fortunate. Beginning with 1886, that union had a rapid growth and was now the largest union affiliated with the Federation. For several years it had been accumulating funds for the eight-hour day, and, when the movement was inaugurated in May 1890, it achieved a large measure of success. The union officers claimed to have won the eight-hour day in 137 cities and a nine-hour day in most other places.
However, the selection of the miners to follow on May 1, 1891, was a grave mistake. Less than one-tenth of the coal miners of the country were then organized. For years the miners' union had been losing ground, with the constant decline of coal prices. Some months before May 1, 1891, the United Mine Workers had become involved in a disastrous strike in the Connelsville coke region, and the plan for an eight-hour strike was abandoned. In this manner the eight-hour movement inaugurated by the convention of the Federation in 1888 came to an end. Apart from the strike of the carpenters in 1890, it had not led to any general movement to gain the eight-hour work day. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of workingmen had won reduced hours of labor, especially in the building trades. By 1891 the eight-hour day had been secured for all building trades in Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, Indianapolis, and San Francisco. In New York and Brooklyn the carpenters, stone-cutters, painters, and plasterers worked eight hours, while the bricklayers, masons, and plumbers worked nine. In St. Paul the bricklayers alone worked nine hours, the remaining trades eight.
In 1892 the labor movement faced for the first time a really modern manufacturing corporation with its practically boundless resources of war, namely the Carnegie Steel Company, in the strike which has become famous under the name of the Homestead Strike. The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, with a membership of 24,068 in 1891, was probably the strongest trade union in the entire history of the American labor movement. Prior to 1889 the relations between the union and the Carnegie firm had been invariably friendly. In January 1889, H.C. Frick, who, as owner of the largest coke manufacturing plant, had acquired a reputation of a bitter opponent of organized labor, became chairman of Carnegie Brothers and Company. In the same year, owing to his assumption of management, as the union men believed, the first dispute occurred between them and the company. Although the agreement was finally renewed for three years on terms dictated by the Association, the controversy left a disturbing impression upon the minds of the men, since during the course of the negotiations Frick had demanded the dissolution of the union.
Negotiations for the new scale presented to the company began in February 1892. A few weeks later the company presented a scale to the men providing for a reduction and besides demanded that the date of the termination of the scale be changed from July 1 to January 1. A number of conferences were held without result; and on May 30 the company submitted an ultimatum to the effect that, if the scale were not signed by June 29, they would treat with the men as individuals. At a final conference which was held on June 23, the company raised its offer from $22 per ton to $23 as the minimum base of the scale, and the union lowered its demand from $25, the rate formerly paid, to $24. But no agreement could be reached on this point nor on others and the strike began June 29 upon the definite issue of the preservation of the union.
Even before the negotiations were broken up, Frick had arranged with the Pinkerton detective agency for 300 men to serve as guards. These men arrived at a station on the Ohio River below Pittsburgh near midnight of July 5. Here they embarked on barges and were towed up the river to Pittsburgh and taken up the Monangahela River to Homestead, which they approached about four o'clock on the morning of July 6. The workmen had been warned of their coming and, when the boat reached the landing back of the steel works, nearly the whole town was there to meet them and to prevent their landing. Passion ran high. The men armed themselves with guns and gave the Pinkertons a pitched battle. When the day was over, at least half a dozen men on both sides had been killed and a number were seriously wounded. The Pinkertons were defeated and driven away and, although there was no more disorder of any sort, the State militia appeared in Homestead on July 12 and remained for several months.
The strike which began in Homestead soon spread to other mills. The Carnegie mills at 29th and 33d Streets, Pittsburgh, went on strike. The strike at Homestead was finally declared off on November 20, and most of the men went back to their old positions as non-union men. The treasury of the union was depleted, winter was coming, and it was finally decided to consider the battle lost.
The defeat meant not only the loss by the union of the Homestead plant but the elimination of unionism in most of the mills in the Pittsburgh region. Where the great Carnegie Company led, the others had to follow. The power of the union was henceforth broken and the labor movement learned the lesson that even its strongest organization was unable to withstand an onslaught by the modern corporation. The Homestead strike stirred the labor movement as few other single events. It had its political reverberation, since it drove home to the workers that an industry protected by high tariff will not necessarily be a haven to organized labor, notwithstanding that the union had actively assisted the iron and steel manufacturers in securing the high protection granted by the McKinley tariff bill of 1890. Many of the votes which would otherwise have gone to the Republican candidate for President went in 1892 to Grover Cleveland, who ran on an anti-protective tariff issue. It is not unlikely that the latter's victory was materially advanced by the disillusionment brought on by the Homestead defeat.
In the summer of 1893 occurred the financial panic. The panic and the ensuing crisis furnished a conclusive test of the strength and stability of the American labor movement. Gompers in his presidential report at the convention of 1899, following the long depression, said: "It is noteworthy, that while in every previous industrial crisis the trade unions were literally mowed down and swept out of existence, the unions now in existence have manifested, not only the power of resistance, but of stability and permanency," and he assigned as the most prominent cause the system of high dues and benefits which had come into vogue in a large number of trade unions. He said: "Beyond doubt the superficial motive of continued membership in unions organized upon this basis was the monetary benefits the members were entitled to; but be that as it may, the results are the same, that is, membership is maintained, the organization remains intact during dull periods of industry, and is prepared to take advantage of the first sign of an industrial revival." Gompers may have overstated the power of resistance of the unions, but their holding power upon the membership cannot be disputed. The aggregate membership of all unions affiliated with the Federation remained near the mark of 275,000 throughout the period of depression from 1893 to 1897. At last the labor movement had become stabilized.
The year 1894 was exceptional for labor disturbances. The number of employes involved reached nearly 750,000, surpassing even the mark set in 1886. However, in contradistinction to 1886, the movement was defensive. It also resulted in greater failure. The strike of the coal miners and the Pullman strike were the most important ones. The United Mine Workers began their strike in Ohio on April 21. The membership did not exceed 20,000, but about 125,000 struck. At first the demand was made that wages should be restored to the level at which they were in May 1893. But within a month the union in most regions was struggling to prevent a further reduction in wages. By the end of July the strike was lost.
The Pullman strike marks an era in the American labor movement because it was the only attempt ever made in America of a revolutionary strike on the Continental European model. The strikers tried to throw against the associated railways and indeed against the entire existing social order the full force of a revolutionary labor solidarity embracing the entire American wage-earning class brought to the point of exasperation by unemployment, wage reductions, and misery. That in spite of the remarkable favorable conjuncture the dramatic appeal failed to shake the general labor movement out of its chosen groove is proof positive of the completion of the stabilization process which had been going on since the early eighties.
The Pullman strike began May 11, 1894, and grew out of a demand of certain employes in the shops of the Pullman Palace Car Company, situated at Pullman, Illinois, for a restoration of the wages paid during the previous year. In March 1894, the Pullman employes had voted to join the American Railway Union. The American Railway Union was an organization based on industrial lines, organized in June 1893, by Eugene V. Debs. Debs, as secretary-treasurer of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, had watched the failure of many a strike by only one trade and resigned this office to organize all railway workers in one organization. The American Railway Union was the result. Between June 9 and June 26 the latter held a convention in Chicago. The Pullman matter was publicly discussed before and after its committee reported their interviews with the Pullman Company. On June 21, the delegates under instructions from their local unions, feeling confident after a victory over the Great Northern in April, unanimously voted that the members should stop handling Pullman cars on June 26 unless the Pullman Company would consent to arbitration.
On June 26 the railway strike began. It was a purely sympathetic strike as no demands were made. The union found itself pitted against the General Managers' Association, representing twenty-four roads centering or terminating in Chicago, which were bound by contracts with the Pullman Company. The association had been organized in 1886, its main business being to determine a common policy as to traffic and freight rates, but incidentally it dealt also with wages. The strike soon spread over an enormous territory. Many of the members of the brotherhoods joined in, although their organizations were opposed to the strike. The lawless element in Chicago took advantage of the opportunity to rob, burn, and plunder, so that the scenes of the great railway strike of 1877 were now repeated. The damages in losses of property and business to the country have been estimated at $80,000,000. On July 7, E.V. Debs, president, and other principal officers of the American Railway Union were indicted, arrested, and held under $10,000 bail. On July 13 they were charged with contempt of the United States Court in disobeying an injunction which enjoined them, among other things, from compelling or inducing by threats railway employes to strike. The strike had already been weakening for some days. On July 12, at the request of the American Railway Union, about twenty-five of the executive officers of national and international labor unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor met in conference in Chicago to discuss the situation. Debs appeared and urged a general strike by all labor organizations. But the conference decided that "it would be unwise and disastrous to the interests of labor to extend the strike any further than it had already gone," and advised the strikers to return to work. On July 13, the American Railway Union, through the Mayor of Chicago, offered the General Managers' Association to declare the strike off, provided the men should be restored to their former positions without prejudice, except in cases where they had been convicted of crime. But the Association refused to deal with the union. The strike was already virtually beaten by the combined moral effect of the indictment of the leaders and of the arrival in Chicago of United States troops, which President Cleveland sent in spite of the protest of Governor Altgeld of Illinois.
The labor organizations were taught two important lessons. First, that nothing can be gained through revolutionary striking, for the government was sufficiently strong to cope with it; and second, that the employers had obtained a formidable ally in the courts.[28]
Defeats in strikes, depression in trade, a rapidly falling labor market and court prosecutions were powerful allies of those socialistic and radical leaders inside the Federation who aspired to convert it from a mere economic organization into an economic-political one and make it embark upon the sea of independent politics.
The convention of 1893 is memorable in that it submitted to the consideration of affiliated unions a "political programme." The preamble to the "programme" recited that the English trade unions had recently launched upon independent politics "as auxiliary to their economic action." The eleven planks of the program demanded: compulsory education; the right of popular initiative in legislation; a legal eight-hour work-day; governmental inspection of mines and workshops; abolition of the sweating system; employers' liability laws; abolition of the contract system upon public work; municipal ownership of electric light, gas, street railway, and water systems; the nationalization of telegraphs, telephones, railroads, and mines; "the collective ownership by the people of all means of production and distribution"; and the referendum upon all legislation.
Immediately after the convention of 1893 affiliated unions began to give their endorsement to the political program. Not until comparatively late did any opposition make itself manifest. Then it took the form of a demand by such conservative leaders as Gompers, McGuire, and Strasser, that plank 10, with its pledge in favor of "the collective ownership by the people of all means of production and distribution," be stricken out. Notwithstanding this, the majority of national trade unions endorsed the program.
During 1894 the trade unions were active participants in politics. In November, 1894, the Federationist gave a list of more than 300 union members candidates for some elective office. Only a half dozen of these, however, were elected. It was mainly to these local failures that Gompers pointed in his presidential address at the convention of 1894 as an argument against the adoption of the political program by the Federation. His attitude clearly foreshadowed the destiny of the program at the convention. The first attack was made upon the preamble, on the ground that the statement therein that the English trade unions had declared for independent political action was false. By a vote of 1345 to 861 the convention struck out the preamble. Upon motion of the typographical union, a substitute was adopted calling for the "abolition of the monopoly system of land holding and the substitution therefor of a title of occupancy and use only." Some of the delegates seem to have interpreted this substitute as a declaration for the single tax; but the majority of those who voted in its favor probably acted upon the principle "anything to beat socialism." Later the entire program was voted down. That sealed the fate of the move for an independent labor party.
The American Federation of Labor was almost drawn into the whirlpool of partisan politics during the Presidential campaign of 1896. Three successive conventions had declared in favor of the free coinage of silver; and now the Democratic party had come out for free coinage. In this situation very many prominent trade union leaders declared publicly for Bryan. President Gompers, however, issued a warning to all affiliated unions to keep out of partisan politics. Notwithstanding this Secretary McGraith, at the next convention of the Federation, charged President Gompers with acting in collusion with the Democratic headquarters throughout the campaign in aid of Bryan's candidacy. After a lengthy secret session the convention approved the conduct of Gompers. Free silver continued to be endorsed annually down to the convention of 1898, when the return of industrial prosperity and rising prices put an end to it as a demand advocated by labor.
The depressed nineties demonstrated conclusively that a new era had arrived. No longer was the labor movement a mere plaything of the alternating waves of prosperity and depression. Formerly, as we saw, it had centered on economic or trade-union action during prosperity only to change abruptly to "panaceas" and politics with the descent of depression. Now the movement, notwithstanding possible changes in membership, and persistent political leanings in some portions of it, as a whole for the first time became stable in purpose and action. Trade unionism has won over politics.
This victory was synchronous with the first successful working out of a national trade agreement and the institutionalization of trade unionism in a leading industry, namely stove molding. While one of the earliest stable trade agreements in a conspicuous trade covering a local field was a bricklayers' agreement in Chicago in 1887, the era of trade agreements really dates from the national system established in the stove foundry industry in 1891. It is true also that the iron and steel workers had worked under a national trade agreement since 1866. However, that trade was too exceptionally strong to be typical.
The stove industry had early reached a high degree of development and organization. There had existed since 1872 the National Association of Stove Manufacturers, an organization dealing with prices and embracing in its membership the largest stove manufacturers of the country. The stove foundrymen, therefore, unlike the manufacturers in practically all other industries at that time, controlled in a large measure their own market. Furthermore, the product had been completely standardized and reduced to a piecework basis, and machinery had not taken the place of the molders' skill. It consequently was no mere accident that the stove industry was the first to develop a system of permanent industrial peace. But, on the other hand, this was not automatically established as soon as the favorable external conditions were provided. In reality, only after years of struggle, of strikes and lockouts, and after the two sides had fought each other "to a standstill," was the system finally installed.
The eighties abounded in stove molders' strikes, and in 1886 the national union began to render effective aid. The Stove Founders' National Defense Association was formed in 1886 as an employers' association of stove manufacturers. The Defense Association aimed at a national labor policy; it was organized for "resistance against any unjust demands of their workmen, and such other purposes as may from time to time prove or appear to be necessary for the benefit of the members thereof as employers of labor." Thus, after 1886, the alignment was made national on both sides. The great battle was fought the next year.
March 8, 1887, the employes of the Bridge and Beach Manufacturing Company in St. Louis struck for an advance in wages and the struggle at once became one between the International Union and the National Defense Association. The St. Louis company sent its patterns to foundries in other districts, but the union successfully prevented their use. This occasioned a series of strikes in the West and of lockouts in the East, affecting altogether about 5000 molders. It continued thus until June, when the St. Louis patterns were recalled, the Defense Association having provided the company with a sufficient number of strike-breakers. Each side was in a position to claim the victory for itself; so evenly matched were the opposing forces.
During the next four years disputes in Association plants were rare. In August 1890, a strike took place in Pittsburgh and, for the first time in the history of the industry, it was settled by a written trade agreement with the local union. This supported the idea of a national trade agreement between the two organizations. Since the dispute of 1887, negotiations with this object were from time to time conducted, the Defense Association invariably taking the initiative. Finally, the national convention of the union in 1890 appointed a committee to meet a like committee of the Defense Association. The conference took place March 25, 1891, and worked out a complete plan of organization for the stove molding industry. Every year two committees of three members each, chosen respectively by the union and the association, were to meet in conference and to draw up general laws for the year. In case of a dispute arising in a locality, if the parties immediately concerned were unable to arrive at common terms, the chief executives of both organizations, the president of the union and the president of the association, were to step in and try to effect an adjustment. If, however, they, too, failed, a conference committee composed of an equal number of members from each side was to be called in and its findings were to be final. Meanwhile the parties were enjoined from engaging in hostilities while the matter at dispute was being dealt with by the duly appointed authorities. Each organization obligated itself to exercise "police authority" over its constituents, enforcing obedience to the agreement. The endorsement of the plan by both organizations was practically unanimous, and has continued in operation without interruption for thirty years until the present day.
Since the end of the nineties the trade agreement has become one of the most generally accepted principles and aspirations of the American labor movement. However, it is not to be understood that by accepting the principle of the trade agreement the labor movement has committed itself to unlimited arbitration of industrial disputes. The basic idea of the trade agreement is that of collective bargaining rather than arbitration. The two terms are not always distinguished, but the essential difference is that in the trade agreement proper no outside party intervenes to settle the dispute and make an award. The agreement is made by direct negotiation between the two organized groups and the sanction which each holds over the head of the other is the strike or lockout. If no agreement can be reached, the labor organization as well as the employers' association, insists on its right to refuse arbitration, whether it be "voluntary" or so-called "compulsory."
The clarification of the conception of the trade agreement was perhaps the main achievement of the nineties. Without the trade agreement the labor movement could hardly come to eschew "panaceas" and to reconstitute itself upon the basis of opportunism. The coming in of the trade agreement, whether national, sectional, or local, was also the chief factor in stabilizing the movement against industrial depressions.
While it was in the nineties that trade unionists first tasted the sweets of institutionalization in industry through "recognition" by employers, it was also during the later eighties and during the nineties that they experienced a revival of suspicion and hostility on the part of the courts and a renewal of legal restraints upon their activities, which were all the more discouraging since for a generation or more they had practically enjoyed non-interference from that quarter. It was at this period that the main legal weapons against trade unionism were forged and brought to a fine point in practical application. The history of the courts' attitude to trade unionism may therefore best be treated from the standpoint of the nineties.
The subject of court interference was not altogether new in the eighties. We took occasion to point out the effect of court interference in labor disputes in the first and second decades of the nineteenth century and again in the thirties. Mention was made also of the court's decision in the Theiss boycott case in New York in 1886, which proved a prime moving factor in launching the famous Henry George campaign for Mayor. And we gave due note to the role of court injunctions in the Debs strike of 1894 and in other strikes. Our present interest is, however, more in the court doctrines than in their effects: more concerned with the development of the legal thought underlying the policies of the courts than with the reactions of the labor movement to the policies themselves.
The earliest case on record, namely the Philadelphia shoemakers' strike case in 1806,[29] charged two offences; one was a combination to raise wages, the other a combination to injure others; both offences were declared by the judge to be forbidden by the common law. To the public at large the prosecution seemed to rest solely upon the charge that the journeymen combined to raise wages. The defense took advantage of this and tried to make use of it for its own purposes. The condemnation of the journeymen on this ground gave rise to a vehement protest on the part of the journeymen themselves and their friends. It was pointed out that the journeymen were convicted for acts which are considered lawful when done by masters or merchants. Therefore when the next conspiracy case in New York in 1809 was decided, the court's charge to the jury was very different. Nothing was said about the illegality of the combinations to raise wages; on the contrary, the jury was instructed that this was not the question at issue. The issue was stated to be whether the defendants had combined to secure an increase in their wages by unlawful means. To the question what means were unlawful, in this case the answer was given in general terms, namely that "coercive and arbitrary" means are unlawful. The fines imposed upon the defendants were only nominal.
A third notable case of the group, namely the Pittsburgh case in 1815, grew out of a strike for higher wages, as did the preceding cases. The charges were the same as in those and the judge took the identical view that was taken by the court in the New York case. However, he explained more fully the meaning of "coercive and arbitrary" action. "Where diverse persons," he said, "confederate together by direct means to impoverish or prejudice a third person, or to do acts prejudicial to the community," they are engaged in an unlawful conspiracy. Concretely, it is unlawful to "conspire to compel an employer to hire a certain description of persons," or to "conspire to prevent a man from freely exercising his trade in a particular place," or to "conspire to compel men to become members of a particular society, or to contribute toward it," or when persons "conspire to compel men to work at certain prices." Thus it was the effort of the shoemakers' society to secure a closed shop which fell chiefly under the condemnation of the court.
The counsel for the defense argued in this case that whatever is lawful for one individual is lawful also for a combination of individuals. The court, however, rejected the arguments on the ground that there was a basic difference between an individual doing a thing and a combination of individuals doing the same thing. The doctrine of conspiracy was thus given a clear and unequivocal definition.
Another noteworthy feature of the Pittsburgh case was the emphasis given to the idea that the defendants' conduct was harmful to the public. The judge condemned the defendants because they tended "to create a monopoly or to restrain the entire freedom of the trade." What a municipality is not allowed to do, he argued, a private association of individuals must not be allowed to do.
Of the group of cases which grew out of the revival of trade union activity in the twenties, the first, a case against Philadelphia master shoemakers, was decided in 1821, and the judge held that it was lawful for the masters, who had recently been forced by employes to a wage increase, to combine in order to restore wages to their "natural level." But he also held that had the employers combined to depress wages of journeymen below the level fixed by free competition, it would have been criminal.
Another Pennsylvania case resulted from a strike by Philadelphia tailors in 1827 to secure the reinstatement of six discharged members. As in previous cases the court rejected the plea that a combination to raise wages was illegal, and directed the attention of the jury to the question of intimidation and coercion, especially as it affected third parties. The defendants were found guilty.
In a third, a New York hatters' case of 1823, the charge of combining to raise wages was entirely absent from the indictment. The issue turned squarely on the question of conspiring to injure others by coercion and intimidation. The hatters were adjudged guilty of combining to deprive a non-union workman of his livelihood.
The revival of trade unionism in the middle of the thirties brought in, as we saw, another crop of court cases.
In 1829 New York State had made "conspiracy to commit any act injurious to public morals or to trade or commerce" a statutory offence, thus reenforcing the existing common law. In 1835 the shoemakers of Geneva struck to enforce the closed shop against a workman who persisted in working below the union rate. The indictment went no further than charging this offence. The journeymen were convicted in a lower court and appealed to the Supreme Court of the State. Chief Justice Savage, in his decision condemning the journeymen, broadened the charge to include a conspiracy to raise wages and condemned both as "injurious to trade or commerce" and thus expressly covered by statute.
The far-reaching effects of this decision came clearly to light in a tailor's case the next year. The journeymen were charged with practising intimidation and violence, while picketing their employers' shops during a prolonged strike against a reduction in wages. Judge Edwards, the trial judge, in his charge to the jury, stigmatized the tailors' society as an illegal combination, largely basing himself upon Judge Savage's decision. The jury handed in a verdict of guilty, but recommended mercy. The judge fined the president of the society $150, one journeyman $100, and the others $50 each. The fines were immediately paid with the aid of a collection taken up in court.
The decisions produced a violent reaction among the workingmen. They held a mass-meeting in City Hall Park, with an estimated attendance of 27,000, burned Judge Savage and Judge Edwards in effigy, and resolved to call a state convention to form a workingmen's party.
So loud, indeed, was the cry that justice had been thwarted that juries were doubtless influenced by it. Two cases came up soon after the tailors' case, the Hudson, New York, shoemakers' in June and the Philadelphia plasterers' in July 1836. In both the juries found a verdict of not guilty. Of all journeymen indicted during this period the Hudson shoemakers had been the most audacious ones in enforcing the closed shop. They not only refused to work for employers who hired non-society men, but fined them as well; yet they were acquitted.
Finally six years later, in 1842, long after the offending trade societies had gone out of existence under the stress of unemployment and depression, came the famous decision in the Massachusetts case of Commonwealth v. Hunt.
This was a shoemakers' case and arose out of a strike. The decision in the lower court was adverse to the defendants. However, it was reversed by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. The decision, written by Chief Justice Shaw, is notable in that it holds trade unions to be legal organizations. In the earlier cases it was never in so many words held that trade unions were unlawful, but in all of them there were suggestions to this effect. Now it was recognized that trade unions are per se lawful organizations and, though men may band themselves together to effect a criminal object under the disguise of a trade union, such a purpose is not to be assumed without positive evidence. On the contrary, the court said that "when an association is formed for purposes actually innocent, and afterwards its powers are abused by those who have the control and management of it to purposes of oppression and injustice, it will be criminal in those who misuse it, or give consent thereto, but not in other members of the association." This doctrine that workingmen may lawfully organize trade unions has since Commonwealth v. Hunt been adopted in nearly every case.
The other doctrine which Justice Shaw advanced in this case has been less generally accepted. It was that the members of a union may procure the discharge of non-members through strikes for this purpose against their employers. This is the essence of the question of the closed shop; and Commonwealth v. Hunt goes the full length of regarding strikes for the closed shop as legal. Justice Shaw said that there is nothing unlawful about such strikes, if they are conducted in a peaceable manner. This was much in advance of the position which is taken by many courts upon this question even at the present day.
After Commonwealth v. Hunt came a forty years' lull in the courts' application of the doctrine of conspiracy to trade unions. In fact so secure did trade unionists feel from court attacks that in the seventies and early eighties their leaders advocated the legal incorporation of trade unions. The desire expressed for incorporation is of extreme interest compared with the opposite attitude of the present day. The motive behind it then was more than the usual one of securing protection for trade union funds against embezzlement by officers. A full enumeration of other motives can be obtained from the testimony of the labor leaders before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor in 1883. McGuire, the national secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, argued before the committee for a national incorporation law mainly for the reason that such a law passed by Congress would remove trade unions from the operation of the conspiracy laws that still existed though in a dormant state on the statute books of a number of Slates, notably New York and Pennsylvania. He pleaded that "if it (Congress) had not the power, it shall assume the power; and, if necessary, amend the constitution to do it." Adolph Strasser of the cigar makers raised the point of protection for union funds and gave as a second reason that it "will give our organization more stability, and in that manner we shall be able to avoid strikes by perhaps settling with our employers, when otherwise we should be unable to do so, because when our employers know that we are to be legally recognized that will exercise such moral force upon them that they cannot avoid recognizing us themselves." W.H. Foster, the secretary of the Legislative Committee of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, stated that in Ohio the law provided for incorporation at a slight cost, but he wanted a national law to "legalize arbitration," by which he meant that "when a question of dispute arose between the employers and the employed, instead of having it as now, when the one often refuses to even acknowledge or discuss the question with the other, if they were required to submit the question to arbitration, or to meet on the same level before an impartial tribunal, there is no doubt but what the result would be more in our favor than it is now, when very often public opinion cannot hear our cause." He, however, did not desire to have compulsory arbitration, but merely compulsory dealing with the union, or compulsory investigation by an impartial body, both parties to remain free to accept the award, provided, however, "that once they do agree the agreement shall remain in force for a fixed period." Like Foster, John Jarrett, the President of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, argued for an incorporation law before the committee solely for its effect upon conciliation and arbitration. He, too, was opposed to compulsory arbitration, but he showed that he had thought out the point less clearly than Foster.
The young and struggling trade unions of the early eighties saw only the good side of incorporation without its pitfalls; their subsequent experience with courts converted them from exponents into ardent opponents of incorporation and of what Foster termed "legalized arbitration."
During the eighties there was much legislation applicable to labor disputes. The first laws against boycotting and blacklisting and the first laws which prohibited discrimination against members who belonged to a union were passed during this decade. At this time also were passed the first laws to promote voluntary arbitration and most of the laws which allowed unions to incorporate. Only in New York and Maryland were the conspiracy laws repealed. Four States enacted such laws and many States passed laws against intimidation. Statutes, however, played at that time, as they do now, but a secondary role. The only statute which proved of much importance was the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. When Congress passed this act in 1890, few people thought it had application to labor unions. In 1893-1894, as we shall see, however, this act was successfully invoked in several labor controversies, notably in the Debs case.
The bitterness of the industrial struggle during the eighties made it inevitable that the labor movement should acquire an extensive police and court record. It was during that decade that charges like "inciting to riot," "obstructing the streets," "intimidation," and "trespass" were first extensively used in connection with labor disputes. Convictions were frequent and penalties often severe. What attitude the courts at that time took toward labor violence was shown most strikingly, even if in too extreme a form to be entirely typical, in the case of the Chicago anarchists.[30]
But the significance of the eighties in the development of relations of the courts to organized labor came not from these cases which were, after all, nothing but ordinary police cases magnified to an unusual degree by the intensity of the industrial struggle and by the excited state of public opinion, but in the new lease of life to the doctrine of conspiracy as affecting labor disputes. During the eighties and nineties there seemed to have been more conspiracy cases than during all the rest of the century. It was especially in 1886 and 1887 that organized labor found court interference a factor. At this time, as we saw, there was also passed voluminous state legislation strengthening the application of the common law doctrine of conspiracy to labor disputes. The conviction of the New York boycotters in 1886 and many similar convictions, though less widely known, of participants in strikes and boycotts were obtained upon this ground.
Where the eighties witnessed a revolution was in a totally new use made of the doctrine of conspiracy by the courts when they began to issue injunctions in labor cases. Injunctions were an old remedy, but not until the eighties did they figure in the struggles between labor and capital. In England an injunction was issued in a labor dispute as early as 1868;[31] but this case was not noticed in the United States and had nothing whatever to do with the use of injunctions in this country. When and where the first labor injunction was issued in the United States is not known. An injunction was applied for in a New York case as early as 1880 but was denied.[32] An injunction was granted in Iowa in 1884, but not until the Southwest railway strike in 1886 were injunctions used extensively. By 1890 the public had yet heard little of injunctions in connection with labor disputes, but such use was already fortified by numerous precedents.
The first injunctions that attained wide publicity were those issued by Federal courts during the strike of engineers against the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy Railroad[33] in 1888 and during the railway strikes of the early nineties. Justification for these injunctions was found in the provisions of the Interstate Commerce Act and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Often the State courts used these Federal cases as precedents, in disregard of the fact that there the issuance of injunctions was based upon special statutes. In other cases the more logical course was followed of justifying the issuance of injunctions upon grounds of equity. But most of the acts which the courts enjoined strikers from doing were already prohibited by the criminal laws. Hence organized labor objected that these injunctions violated the old principle that equity will not interfere to prevent crime. No such difficulties arose when the issuance of injunctions was justified as a measure for the protection of property. In the Debs case,[34] when the Supreme Court of the United States passed upon the issuance of injunctions in labor disputes, it had recourse to this theory.
But the theory of protection to property also presented some difficulties. The problem was to establish the principle of irreparable injury to the complainant's property. This was a simple matter when the strikers were guilty of trespass, arson, or sabotage. Then they damaged the complainant's physical property and, since they were usually men against whom judgments are worthless, any injury they might do was irreparable. But these were exceptional cases. Usually injunctions were sought to prevent not violence, but strikes, picketing, or boycotting. What is threatened by strikes and picketing is not the employer's physical property, but the relations he has established as an employer of labor, summed up in his expectancy of retaining the services of old employes and of obtaining new ones. Boycotting, obviously, has no connection with acts of violence against physical property, but is designed merely to undermine the profitable relations which the employer had developed with his customers. These expectancies are advantages enjoyed by established businesses over new competitors and are usually transferable and have market value. For these reasons they are now recognized as property in the law of good-will and unfair competition for customers, having been first formulated about the middle of the nineteenth century.
The first case which recognized these expectancies of a labor market was Walker v. Cronin,[35] decided by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1871. It held that the plaintiff was entitled to recover damages from the defendants, certain union officials, because they had induced his employes, who were free to quit at will, to leave his employ and had also been instrumental in preventing him from getting new employes. But as yet these expectancies were not considered property in the full sense of the word. A transitional case is that of Brace Bros. v. Evans in 1888.[36] In that case an injunction against a boycott was justified on the ground that the value of the complainant's physical property was being destroyed when the market was cut off. Here the expectancies based upon relations which customers and employes were thought of as giving value to the physical property, but they were not yet recognized as a distinct asset which in itself justifies the issuance of injunctions.
This next step was taken in the Barr[37] case in New Jersey in 1893. Since then there have been frequent statements in labor injunction cases to the effect that both the expectancies based upon the merchant-function and the expectancies based upon the employer-function are property.
But the recognition of "probable expectancies" as property was not in itself sufficient to complete the chain of reasoning that justifies injunctions in labor disputes. It is well established that no recovery can be had for losses due to the exercise by others of that which they have a lawful right to do. Hence the employers were obliged to charge that the strikes and boycotts were undertaken in pursuance of an unlawful conspiracy. Thus the old conspiracy doctrine was combined with the new theory, and "malicious" interference with "probable expectancies" was held unlawful. Earlier conspiracy had been thought of as a criminal offence, now it was primarily a civil wrong. The emphasis had been upon the danger to the public, now it was the destruction of the employer's business. Occasionally the court went so far as to say that all interference with the business of employers is unlawful. The better view developed was that interference is prima facie unlawful but may be justified. But even this view placed the burden of proof upon the workingmen. It actually meant that the court opened for itself the way for holding the conduct of the workingmen to be lawful only when it sympathized with their demands.
During the eighties, despite the far-reaching development of legal theories on labor disputes, the issuance of injunctions was merely sporadic, but a veritable crop came up during 1893-1894. Only the best-known injunctions can be here noted. The injunctions issued in the course of the Southwest railway strike in 1886 and the Burlington strike in 1888 have already received mention. An injunction was also issued by a Federal court during a miners' strike at Coeur d'Alène, Idaho, in 1892.[38] A famous injunction was the one of Judges Taft and Rickes in 1893, which directed the engineers, who were employed by connecting railways, to handle the cars of the Ann Arbor and Michigan railway, whose engineers were on strike.[39] This order elicited much criticism because it came close to requiring men to work against their will. This was followed by the injunction of Judge Jenkins in the Northern Pacific case, which directly prohibited the quitting of work.[40] From this injunction the defendants took an appeal, with the result that in Arthur v. Oakes[41] it was once for all established that the quitting of work may not be enjoined.
During the Pullman strike numerous injunctions, most sweeping in character, were issued by the Federal courts upon the initiative of the Department of Justice. Under the injunction which was issued in Chicago arose the famous contempt case against Eugene V. Debs,[42] which was carried to the Supreme Court of the United States. The decision of the court in this case is notable, because it covered the main points of doubt above mentioned and placed the use of injunctions in labor disputes upon a firm legal basis.
Another famous decision of the Supreme Court growing out of the railway strikes of the early nineties was in the Lennon case[43] in 1897. Therein the court held that all persons who have actual notice of the issuance of an injunction are bound to obey its terms, whether they were mentioned by name or not; in other words, the courts had evolved the "blanket injunction."
At the end of the nineties, the labor movement, enriched on the one side by the lessons of the past and by the possession of a concrete goal in the trade agreement, but pressed on the other side by a new form of legal attack and by the growing consolidation of industry, started upon a career of new power but faced at the same time new difficulties.
[31] Springhead Spinning Co. v. Riley, L.R. 6 E. 551 (1868).
[32] Johnson Harvester Co. v. Meinhardt, 60 How. Pr. 171.
[33] Chicago, Burlington, etc., R.R. Co. v. Union Pacific R.R. Co., U.S. Dist. Ct., D. Neb. (1888).
[34] In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564 (1895).
[35] 107 Mass. 555 (1871).
[36] 5 Pa. Co. Ct. 163 (1888).
[37] Barr v. Trades' Council, 53 N.J.E. 101 (1894).
[38] Coeur d'Alène Mining Co. v. Miners' Union, 51 Fed. 260 (1892).
[39] Toledo, etc. Co. v. Penn. Co., 54 Fed. 730 (1893).
[40] Farmers' Loan and Trust Co. v. N.P.R. Co., 60 Fed. 803 (1895).
[41] 64 Fed. 310 (1894).
[42] In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564 (1894).
[43] In re Lennon, 166 U.S. 548 (1897).
When, in 1898, industrial prosperity returned, there came with it a rapid expansion of labor organization. At no time in its history, prior to the World War, not excepting the Great Upheaval in the eighties, did labor organizations make such important gains as during the following five years. True, in none of these years did the labor movement add over half a million members as in the memorable year of 1886; nevertheless, from the standpoint of permanence, the upheaval during the eighties can scarcely be classed with the one which began in the late nineties.
During 1898 the membership of the American Federation of Labor remained practically stationary, but during 1899 it increased by about 70,000 (to about 350,000); in 1900, it increased by 200,000; in 1901, by 240,000; in 1902, by 237,000; in 1903, by 441,000; in 1904, by 210,000, bringing the total to 1,676,000. In 1905 a backward tide set in; and the membership decreased by nearly 200,000 during that year. It remained practically stationary until 1910, when the upward movement was resumed, finally bringing the membership to near the two million mark, to 1,996,000, in 1913. If we include organizations unaffiliated with the Federation, among them the bricklayers[44] and the four railway brotherhoods, with about 700,000 members, the union membership for 1913 will be brought near a total of 2,700,000.
A better index of progress is the proportion of organized workers to organizable workers. Two such estimates have been made. Professor George E. Barnett figures the organizable workers in 1900 at 21,837,000; in 1910 at 30,267,000. On this basis wage earners were 3.5 percent organized in 1900 and 7 percent in 1910.[45] Leo Wolman submits more detailed figures for 1910. Excluding employers, the salaried group, agricultural and clerical workers, persons engaged in personal or domestic service, and those below twenty years of age (unorganizable workers), the organizable total was 11,490,944. With an estimated trade union strength of 2,116,317 for 1910 the percentage of the organized was 18.4.[46] Excluding only employers and salaried persons, his percentage was 7.7, which compares closely with Professor Barnett's.
Of greater significance are Wolman's figures for organization by industries. These computations show that in 1910 the breweries had 88.8 percent, organized, printing and book binding 34.3 percent, mining 30.5 percent, transportation 17.3 percent, clothing 16.9 percent, building trades 16.2 percent, iron and steel 9.9 percent, metal 4.7 percent, and textile 3.7 percent.[47] By separate occupations, railway conductors, brakemen, and locomotive engineers were from 50-100 percent organized; printers, locomotive firemen, molders and plasterers, from 30-50 percent; bakers, carpenters, plumbers, from 15-30 percent organized.[48]
Accompanying the numerical growth of labor organizations was an extension of organization into heretofore untouched trades as well as a branching out into new geographical regions, the South and the West. On the whole, however, though the Federation was not unmindful of the unskilled, still, during the fifteen years after 1898 it brought into its fold principally the upper strata of semi-skilled labor. Down to the "boom" period brought on by the World War, the Federation did not comprise to any great extent either the totally unskilled, or the partially skilled foreign-speaking workmen, with the exception of the miners and the clothing workers. In other words, those below the level of the skilled trades, which did gain admittance, were principally the same elements which had asserted their claim to organization during the stormy period of the Knights of Labor.[49] The new accretions to the American wage-earning class since the eighties, the East and South Europeans, on the one hand, and the ever-growing contingent of "floaters" of native and North and West European stock, on the other hand, were still largely outside the organization.
The years of prosperity brought an intensified activity of the trade unions on a scale hitherto unknown. Wages were raised and hours reduced all along the line. The new strength of the trade unions received a brilliant test during the hard times following the financial panic of October 1907, when they successfully fought wage reductions. As good a test is found in the conquest of the shorter day. By 1900 the eight-hour day was the rule in the building trades, in granite cutting and in bituminous coal mining. The most spectacular and costly eight-hour fight was waged by the printers. In the later eighties and early nineties, the Typographical Union had endeavored to establish a nine-hour day in the printing offices. This was given a setback by the introduction of the linotype machine during the period of depression, 1893-1897. In spite of this obstacle, however, the Typographical Union held its ground. Adopting the policy that only journeymen printers must operate the linotype machines, the union was able to meet the situation. And, furthermore, in 1898, through agreement with the United Typothetæ of America, the national association of employers in book and job printing, the union was able to gain the nine-hour day in substantially all book and job offices. In 1903 the union demanded the eight-hour day in all printing offices to become effective January 1, 1906. To gain an advantage over the union, the United Typothetæ, late in the summer of 1905, locked out all its union men. This at once precipitated a strike for the eight-hour day. The American Federation of Labor levied a special assessment on all its members in aid of the strikers. By 1907 the Typographical Union won its demand all along the line, although at a tremendous cost of money running into several million dollars, and in 1909 the United Typothetæ formally conceded the eight-hour day.
Another proof of trade union progress is found in the spread of trade agreements. The idea of a joint partnership of organized labor and organized capital in the management of industry, which, ever since the fifties, had been struggling for acceptance, finally showed definite signs of coming to be materialized.
(1) The Miners
In no other industry has a union's struggle for "recognition" offered a richer and more instructive picture of the birth of the new order with its difficulties as well as its promises than in coal mining. Faced in the anthracite field[50] by a small and well knitted group of employers, generally considered a "trust," and by a no less difficult situation in bituminous mining due to cut-throat competition among the mine operators, the United Mine Workers have succeeded in a space of fifteen years in unionizing the one as well as the other; while at the same time successfully and progressively solving the gigantic internal problem of welding a polyglot mass of workers into a well disciplined and obedient army.
The miners' union attained its first successes in the so-called central bituminous competitive field, including Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois. In this field a beginning had been made in 1886 when the coal operators and the union entered into a collective agreement. However, its scope was practically confined to Ohio and even that limited agreement went under in 1890. [51] With the breakdown of this agreement, the membership dwindled so that by the time of a general strike in 1894, the total paid-up membership was barely 13,000. This strike was undertaken to restore the wage-scale of 1893, but during the ensuing years of depression wages were cut still further.[52]
The turn came as suddenly as it was spectacular. In 1897, with a membership which had dropped to 10,000 and of which 7000 were in Ohio and with an empty treasury, the United Mine Workers called a general strike trusting to a rising market and to an awakened spirit of solidarity in the majority of the unorganized after four years of unemployment and distress. In fact the leaders had not miscalculated. One hundred thousand or more coal miners obeyed the order to go on a strike. In Illinois the union had but a handful of members when the strike started, but the miners struck to a man. The tie-up was practically complete except in West Virginia. That State had early become recognized as the weakest spot in the miners' union's armor. Notwithstanding the American Federation of Labor threw almost its entire force of organizers into that limited area, which was then only beginning to assume its present day importance in the coal mining industry, barely one-third of the miners were induced to strike. A contributing factor was a more energetic interference from the courts than in other States. All marching upon the highways and all assemblages of the strikers in large gatherings were forbidden by injunctions. On one occasion more than a score of men were sentenced to jail for contempt of court by Federal Judge Goff. The handicap in West Virginia was offset by sympathy and aid from other quarters. Many unions throughout the country and even the general public sent the striking miners financial aid. In Illinois Governor John R. Tanner refused the requests for militia made by several sheriffs.