CHAPTER XIII

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN LABOR AND THE COURTS *

Court precedent-Creation of new relations and institutions by labor-Refusal of courts to take motives into consideration -Defendant, labor's rôle-Position of unemployed men and the court position-Trial of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers-Provocative acts of Erectors' Association-State disregard of Iron Workers' interests-A judge the natural protector of vested rights-Courts of law do not claim to be courts of justice-Analogy between political offenders and condemned labor unionists.

At one time such submission to authority as was expressed recently by a negro woman brought before the New York night court was expected of the common run of men. The woman had been arrested by an officer in citizen's clothes. Without explaining to her that he was a policeman he removed her by force from the street-car where she had resented the insults of a white woman. Naturally she fought against her forceful expulsion and for her freedom. Some hours later before the magistrate in abject apology for her resistance she said: "I didn't know, jedge, that he was an offica of the law with more rights than me ner anybody." She had braved the club of the man but she bowed reverently before the officer of the law.

*See also Chapters: Violence, Strikes and Violence, Legislation and the Unions.

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Such expressions carry with them comfort and reassurance to authorities although less is required in the interest of public safety.

All that law and order demand to-day is that dissatisfaction with institutions and particularly with court decrees and administration be expressed through the courts and legislatures as constitutions provide. This requirement presupposes that the courts and the legislatures are susceptible to new impressions. The purpose and efforts of the labor unions are to introduce new relations between men and to establish new institutions and new codes. The courts rest on old codes and old relations and base their decrees on the precedents established by previous decisions.

At the instigation of the unions, the legislatures have enacted new laws to further the union purpose and to protect the organizations. But the laws which have been passed by the legislatures are subject to annulment or the value of the law if upheld may be lost to labor through the particular interpretation given it by the judge who has no understanding or sympathy with labor unions. Even court precedent does not establish for practical use the legality of boycotts, picketing, or trade agreements. Picketing may be legal but a picket in active operation is disturbing the peace. Boycotts are being outlawed by court interpretations and a union as such may at any time be dissolved.

But labor's particular quarrel with the courts is that

they refuse to take motives into account or provocations for coercion; that courts are incompetent to distinguish between acts which are inspired by selfish interests and acts which result from efforts to settle issues of social significance; that new issues involved in labor disputes cannot intelligently be decided on precedents which were not concerned with the labor issue, particularly when a court fails to distinguish between working men as human beings and workingmen as commodities.

As labor unions now and then secure a footing or recognition in the community they have presumed on their new position and in the character of an accepted institution turned to the courts in the rôle of plaintiff. But it is significant that labor's usual rôle is that of defendant. Labor knows that the courts are not an agency for the setting up of new conceptions and new relations. But when a labor unionist finds himself in the court as defendant of his own movement, invariably the limitations of the court are forgotten. The propaganda nature of the defendant rises to the occasion. He thinks of the court as laymen are taught to think of it, not as a court of law but as a house of justice. The opportunity is seized to establish the great truth to which the truth of the minor act for which he was indicted is an unimportant incident. He is obsessed by the thought of a new opportunity to pursue his mission and he loses sight of court procedure, and if he is reminded of it, believes that

legal practice will give way before the presentation of motives and provocations.

During a period of unemployment in New York City, when according to official estimates from 100,000 to 300,000 men and women were out of work, a movement was started by some unemployed men to demand and if necessary to take food and shelter whereever it might be had. Some of the men belonged to the trade unions, others to industrial unions and some to no unions at all. They all accepted the union proposition that it was harmful to labor as a whole for individual men to work below union rates to bridge over temporary periods of unemployment; they refused to regard labor as a drug on the market and sell out at bargain rates; they declared that they were not responsible for the shortage in employment but that society was; they demanded that the community regard them and that the men regard themselves with the consideration which men deserved who were the victims of industrial fluctuations created by society; on account of certain regulations connected with the city's provision for lodging as well as inadequate accommodation they demanded shelter and food from churches and other institutions.

Their unbidden entrance into a church brought them before the court. Their counsel undertook to explain the situation and the position of the men. The magistrate tried to make clear that the court had nothing to do with the fact that the men could not get work,

that the court was most assuredly not the place to thrash out the remarkable conceptions of these men as to their rights; the business of the court was to uphold the law. He gave out the following statement to the press:

The repeated attempts of counsel to befog the issues here and create a prejudice in the name of hunger for these defendents is inexcusable and not in keeping with the high standards of practice. The only issue involved here is one of law and order. 1

If such irrelevant issues as conceived by these unemployed men were admitted, legal practice and regular procedure would surely lose something of its practice and its regularity. It is difficult to realize what would be the development of a court of law which admitted evidence so far afield of the mere charge of "disorderly conduct " and " unlawful assembly" with which it was in the present case alone concerned. The purpose of the men and the ideas they represented were relegated to other meeting places. As the friends. of the men left the court at the close of the trial they were saying on the court house steps, "What a farce." It is a common comment heard on the steps when a case against labor is lost and closed.

When thirty-eight union men were tried in Indianapolis on the charge of conspiring in the transportation of dynamite, all evidence was admitted which would tend to show that the men on trial favored destructive