Yellow Dog's End

When Congress passed the Clayton Act in 1914, it thought it had emancipated Organized Labor. But Congress was mistaken. The Federal courts virtually nullified the Clayton Act in so far as it was supposed to protect trade-unionism from the anti-trust law. Strikes were still broken by Federal injunctions charging interstate conspiracies and monopolies. Labor leaders were still jailed without hearings for contempt. The "yellow-dog" contract spread and throve. Bitterly disappointed, union labor demanded that Congress do its job over again, enact fool-proof legislation through which hostile employers could not weave their way to the Federal courts.

Last week, in the wake of the Senate (where the vote had been 75-to-5), the House passed (363-to-13) a bill (H. R. 5315) to accomplish this purpose. Not only were injunctions by Federal courts to be severely limited but also the "yellow-dog" contract was to be legally exiled.

"A great achievement!" exclaimed William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor. Two decades ago industrialists combatting Labor's advance had a large section of public opinion on their side. Last week, despite vigorous lobbying, the League for Industrial Rights could muster to its support only a handful of Republican Representatives from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts who solemnly warned that Congress was "making a long march toward Moscow."

The Significance. Fundamental in the new measure was this clear statement of U. S. public policy on Labor: Whereas under prevailing economic conditions . . . the individual unorganized worker is commonly helpless to exercise actual liberty of contract and to protect his freedom of labor, and thereby to obtain acceptable terms and conditions of employment, wherefore it is necessary that he have full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of his own choosing, to negotiate the terms and conditions of his employment, and that he shall be free from the interference, restraint, or coercion of employers of labor . . . in concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining. . . .

A "yellow-dog" contract is an agreement of employment wherein the employe promises the employer not to join any labor union. Largely because he once upheld the validity of such a contract, so hateful to union labor, the Senate rejected the nomination of U. S. Circuit Judge John Johnston Parker of North Carolina to the Supreme Court (TIME, May 19, 1930). Declared the House Judiciary Committee reporting H. R. 5315: "The vice of such contracts, which are becoming alarmingly widespread, is that if they are carried to their ultimate conclusion, they would abolish trade-unionism. That is undoubtedly the purpose of the organizations of employers opposing this bill." Under the bill no such contract can be enforced in any U. S. court.

In equity proceedings where no relief at law exists, with H. R. 5315 on the statute books, employers will have a much harder time getting Federal injunctions to restrain strikers. Inferior U. S. courts are to be prohibited* from issuing injunctions against workers for: 1) striking; 2) using union money to push the strike; 3) publicizing the strike by advertising, speeches and picketing; 4) holding mass meetings: 5) urging other workers to join the strike. Upon Labor are only two limitations: 1) no violence; 2) no fraud. The only way an employer involved in a labor dispute can get a Federal injunction will be to prove to the court that he has made "every reasonable effort" to settle the strike; to show under oath that unlawful acts have been committed or threatened against him and to convince the judge that failure to enjoin the strikers will do him "substantial and irreparable" injury. He must also file an adequate bond to recompense the strikers in case the injunction is quashed.

No longer would judges try their own contempt cases growing out of a labor fracas. Instead defendants could demand a jury, even another judge.

Because the 1928 Republican platform promised Labor relief from injunctions it was taken for granted that President Hoover would sign the bill after House and Senate had composed minor technical differences.

The passage of this basically important legislation made two triumphs in as many weeks, for that white-haired old Nebraskan, Senator George William Norris, who is not in the habit of winning victories. Last fortnight he got through Congress his constitutional reform abolishing the "lame duck" session of Congress./- In Senator Norris' patience there is an Oriental quality which takes no heed of time to accomplish its purpose. For a full decade he worked to enact the "lame duck" amendment. His advocacy of anti-injunction labor legislation is of almost as long standing. Flushed with a sense of sudden accomplishment, he took up last week another ancient legislative favorite of his --government operation of Muscle Shoals --and got the Agriculture Committee to report it favorably to the Senate.

* Only the U. S. Supreme Court derives its authority directly from the Constitution, which empowers Congress to create and control lesser tribunals.

/- Last week the New York legislature was the second to ratify what will become the 20th Amendment.

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