Lobby Duel

What is Property?

Sir William Blackstone, 18th Century English jurist, called it: "The sole and despotic dominion which one claims and exercises over the external things of the world in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the world."

Senator Henrik Shipstead, 20th Century Minnesota dentist, in a Senate bill to amend the judiciary law, has translated the "external things of the world" into things "tangible and transferable."

Because of this translation, scores of bigwigs in the American Federation of Labor and many more representing U. S. manufacturers, railroaders and other employers, trooped last week to Washington to try to influence the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was pondering the Shipstead bill, in its decision as to how far man's paid services to man can constitute Property. Hot argument ensued.

The practical aim of the bill, which Labor backed, is to remove labor, as an intangible commodity, from the jurisdiction of equity courts and from control by court injunctions. The A. F. of L. men recited uses and abuses of anti-Labor injunctions, the effect of which has been to turn the anti-trust laws from organized Labor's blessing into Labor's bane.

In retort, employers construed goodwill as a form of Property. When labor organizers disrupt the relations between workers and employers, are they not destroying goodwill? "The most important right is the right of use, for without use, property may be valueless," said Col. James Augustan Emery, counsel for the National Association of Manufacturers. "This bill would say to industry: 'You can protect your plants and your physical property, but you cannot protect the use thereof.' '

The Capital-v.-Labor lobby wrangled long. The Shipstead bill remained an idea on paper.