Testimony was taken in many States, and after a trial lasting twelve weeks the jury assessed the damages to the plaintiff at $74,000.On account of error, the case was remanded for re-trial in 1911.At the second trial the jury gave the plaintiff a verdict for $80,000, the full amount asked.According to the law, this amount was trebled, leaving the judgment, with costs added, at $252,000.The Supreme Court having sustained the verdict, the puzzling question of how to collect it arose.As such funds as the union had were invulnerable to process, the savings bank accounts of the individual defendants were attached.The union insisted that the defendants were not taxable for accrued interest, and the United States Supreme Court, now appealed to for a third time, sustained the plaintiff's contention.In this manner $60,000 were obtained.Foreclosure proceedings were then begun against one hundred and forty homes belonging to union men in the towns of Danbury, Norwalk, and Bethel.The union boasted that this sale would prove only an incubus to the purchasers, for no one would dare occupy the houses sold under such circumstances.In the meantime the American Federation, which had financed the litigation, undertook to raise the needed sum by voluntary collection and made Gompers's birthday the occasion for a gift to the Danbury local.The Federation insisted that the houses be sold on foreclosure and that the collected money be used not as a prior settlement but as an indemnity to the individuals thus deprived of their homes.Rancor gave way to reason, however, and just before the day fixed for the foreclosure sale the matter was settled.In all, $235,000 was paid in damages by the union to the company.In the fourteen years during which this contest was waged, about forty defendants, one of the plaintiffs, and eight judges who had passed on the controversy, died.The outcome served as a spur to the Federation in hastening through Congress the Clayton bill of 1914, designed to place labor unions beyond the reach of the anti-trust laws.
The union label has in more recent years achieved importance as a weapon in union warfare.This is a mark or device denoting a union-made article.It might be termed a sort of labor union trademark.Union men are admonished to favor the goods so marked, but it was not until national organizations were highly perfected that the label could become of much practical value.It is a device of American invention and was first used by the cigar makers in 1874.In 1880 their national body adopted the now familiar blue label and, with great skill and perseverance and at a considerable outlay of money, has pushed its union-made ware, in the face of sweat-shop competition, of the introduction of cigar making machinery, and of fraudulent imitation.Gradually other unions making products of common consumption adopted labels.Conspicuous among these were the garment makers, the hat makers, the shoe makers, and the brewery workers.As the value of the label manifestly depends upon the trade it entices, the unions are careful to emphasize the sanitary conditions and good workmanship which a label represents.
The application of the label is being rapidly extended.Building materials are now in many large cities under label domination.In Chicago the bricklayers have for over fifteen years been able to force the builders to use only union-label brick, and the carpenters have forced the contractors to use only material from union mills.There is practically no limit to this form of mandatory boycott.The barbers, retail clerks, hotel employees, and butcher workmen hang union cards in their places of employment or wear badges as insignia of union loyalty.As these labels do not come under the protection of the United States trademark laws, the unions have not infrequently been forced to bring suits against counterfeiters.
Finally, in their efforts to fortify themselves against undue increase in the rate of production or "speeding up," against the inrush of new machinery, and against the debilitating alternation of rush work and no work, the unions have attempted to restrict the output.The United States Industrial Commission reported in 1901 that "there has always been a strong tendency among labor organizations to discourage exertion beyond a certain limit.The tendency does not express itself in formal rules.On the contrary, it appears chiefly in the silent, or at least informal pressure of working class opinion." Some unions have rules, others a distinct understanding, on the subject of a normal day's work, and some discourage piecework.But it is difficult to determine how far this policy has been carried in application.
Carroll D.Wright, in a special report as United States Commissioner of Labor in 1904, said that "unions in some cases fix a limit to the amount of work a workman may perform a day.
Usually it is a secret understanding, but sometimes, when the union is strong, no concealment is made." His report mentioned several trades, including the building trades, in which this curtailment is prevalent.
The course of this industrial warfare between the unions and the employers has been replete with sordid details of selfishness, corruption, hatred, suspicion, and malice.In every community the strike or the boycott has been an ominous visitant, leaving in its trail a social bitterness which even time finds it difficult to efface.In the great cities and the factory towns, the constant repetition of labor struggles has created centers of perennial discontent which are sources of never-ending reprisals.
In spite of individual injustice, however, one can discern in the larger movements a current setting towards a collective justice and a communal ideal which society in self-defense is imposing upon the combatants.
