In 1899 an injunction was issued out of the United States Circuit Court of West Virginia against "John Smith and others," without naming the "others," in the interest of the Wheeling Railway Company. Two men, neither of them being John Smith, nor found to be the agent of "John Smith and others," were jailed for contempt of court![134] In 1900 members of the International Cigarmakers' Union, in New York City, were enjoined by Justice Freeman, in the Supreme Court, from even approaching their former employers for the purpose of attempting to arrange a peaceable settlement! The cigarmakers were further enjoined from publishing their grievances, or in any manner making their case known to the public, if the tendency of that should be to vex the plaintiffs or make them uneasy; from trying, even in a peaceful way, in any place in the city, even in the privacy of a man's own home, to persuade a new employee that he ought to sympathize with the union cause sufficiently to refuse to work for unjust employers; and, finally, the union was forbidden to pay money to its striking members to support them and their families. In the great steel strike of 1901, the members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers were enjoined from peaceably discussing the merits of their claim with the men who were at work, even though the latter might raise no objection. In Pennsylvania, in the case of the York Manufacturing Company vs. Obedick, it was held that workmen had "no legal right" to persuade or induce other workmen to quit, or not to accept, employment.[135] In the strike of the members of the International Typographical Union against the Buffalo Express, the strikers were enjoined from discussing the strike, or talking about the paper in any way which might be construed as being against the paper. If one of the strikers advised a friend not to buy a "scab" paper, he was liable under the terms of that injunction to imprisonment for contempt of court. The members of the same union were, in the case of the Sun Printing and Publishing Company vs. Delaney and others, enjoined by Justice Bookstaver, in the Supreme Court of New York, from publishing their side of the controversy with the Sun as an argument why persons friendly to organized labor should not advertise in a paper hostile to it. In 1906 members of the same union were enjoined by Supreme Court Justice Gildersleeve from "making any requests, giving any advice, or resorting to any persuasion ... to overcome the free will of any person connected with the plaintiff [136]
These are only a few examples of the abuse of the injunction in labor disputes, hundreds of which have been granted, many of them equally subversive of all sound principles of popular government. There is probably not another civilized country in which such judicial tyranny would be tolerated. It is not without significance that in West Virginia, where, as a result of an outcry against a number of particularly glaring abuses of the power to issue injunctions, the legislature passed a law limiting the right to issue injunctions, the Supreme Court decided that the law was unconstitutional, upon the ground that the legislature had no right to attempt to restrain the courts which were coördinate with itself.
Even more dangerous to organized labor than the injunction is what is popularly known by union men as "Taff Vale law." Our judges have not been slow to follow the example set by the English judges in the famous case of the Taff Vale Railway Company against the officers of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, a powerful labor organization. The decision in that case was most revolutionary. It compelled the workers to pay damages, to the extent of $115,000, to the railroad company for losses sustained by the company through a strike of its employees, members of the defendant union. That decision struck terror into the hearts of British trade unionists. At last they had to face a mode of attack even more dangerous than the injunction which their transatlantic brethren had so long been contending against. Taff Vale law could not long be confined to England. Very soon, our American courts followed the English example. A suit was instituted against the members of a lodge of the Machinists' Union in Rutland, Vermont, and the defendants were ordered to pay $2500. A writ was served upon each member and the property of every one of them attached. Since that time, numerous other decisions of a like nature have been rendered in various parts of the country. Thus the unions have been assailed in a vital place, their treasuries. It is manifestly foolish and quite useless for the members of a union to strike against an employer for any purpose whatever, if the employer is to be able to recover damages from the union. Taff Vale judge-made law renders the labor union hors de combat at a stroke.
IX
The immediate effect of the revolutionary judicial decision in England was to arouse the workers to the necessity for class-conscious political action. The cry went up that the unions must adopt a policy of independent political action. There is no doubt whatever that the tremendous advance of the Socialist movement in England during the past few years began as a result of the attack made upon the funds of the labor unions. From the moment of the Taff Vale decision the Socialist movement in England took rapid strides. A similar process is going on in this country, gathering momentum with every injunction against organized labor, every hostile enactment of legislatures, and every use of the judicial and executive powers to defeat the workers in their struggle against capitalism. The workers are being educated to political Socialism by the stern experiences resulting from capitalist rule. Underneath the thin veneer of party differences, the worker sees the class identity of the great political parties, and cries out, "A plague on both your houses!" The Socialist argument comes to him with a twofold force: not only does it show him how he is enslaved and exploited as a producer, but it convinces him that as a citizen he has it in his power to control the government and make it what he will. He can put an end to government by injunctions, to the use of police, state, and federal troops to break strikes, and to the sequestration of union funds by hostile judges. He can, if he so decides, own and control the government, and, through the government, own and control the essentials of life: be master of his own labor, his own bread, his own life.
If we take for granted that the universal increase of Socialist sentiment, and the growth of political Socialism, as measured by its rapidly increasing vote, presage this great triumph of the working class; that the heretofore despised and oppressed proletariat is, in a not far distant future, to rule instead of being ruled, the question arises, will the last state be better than the first? Will society be bettered by the change of masters?
The very form of the question must be denied. It is not a movement for a change of masters. To regard this struggle of the classes as one of revenge, of exploited masses ready to overturn the social structure that they may become exploiters instead of exploited, is to misread the whole movement. The political and economic conquest of society by the working class means the end of class divisions once and forever. A social democracy, a society in which all things essential to the common life and well-being are owned and controlled by the people in common, democratically organized, precludes the existence of class divisions in our present-day economic and political sense. Profit, through human exploitation, alone has made class divisions possible, and the Socialist régime will abolish profit. The working class, in emancipating itself, at the same time makes liberty possible for the whole race of man, and destroys the conditions of class rule.
FOOTNOTES:
[116] The Communist Manifesto, Kerr edition, page 8.
[117] In Centralization and the Law: Scientific Legal Education, An Illustration, edited by Melville M. Bigelow.