THE BOYCOTT IN AMERICAN TRADE

UNIONS

CHAPTER I

THE NATURE OF THE BOYCOTT

The passage by Congress of the labor union, injunction and contempt sections of the Clayton Anti-Trust Bill and the decision by the United States Supreme Court on January 5, 1915, affirming the judgment of the lower courts in the famous Danbury Hatters' case1 should again direct the attention of students of the labor problem to the position of the trade-union boycott in American industrial life. A decision by the judicial branch of the federal government which imposes a severe legal disability upon the boycott and the adoption by the legislative department of an act which is interpreted as both sanctioning and forbidding its use warrant a more thorough examination than has heretofore been made of the origin and function of the boycott as a re

235 U. S. 522.

2 Thus, "Mr. Gompers, at least, regards the act as an unqualified victory. In his leading article in the November American Federationist (1914), he says: 'The labor sections of the Clayton AntiTrust act are a great victory for organized labor. In no other country in the world is there an enunciation of fundamental principle comparable to the incisive, virile statement in section C.'" (P. G. Wright, "The Contest in Congress between Organized Labor and Organized Business," Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. xxix, p. 261). On the other hand, Daniel Davenport, General Counsel for the American Anti-Boycott Association, says: "In the shape in which it finally passed it makes few changes in existing laws relating to labor unions, injunctions and contempts of court, and those are of slight practical importance” (An Analysis of the Labor Union, Injunction and Contempt Sections of the Clayton Anti-Trust Bill, published by the American Anti-Boycott Association). The actual effect of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act cannot, of course, be determined until it has been interpreted by the courts.

source of trade unions. In the case of the boycott, as in such other trade-union devices as the restriction of output, the regulation of the number of apprentices, and the closed shop, popular condemnation or approval has been too often dictated by prejudices engendered by the natural alignment of sections of the population with the employing or the laboring class. American literature on the subject has made little attempt up to the present time to lift the discussion above the plane of partisan controversy. In this monograph it is designed to make an impartial study of the boycott in its relation to trade unionism; of the circumstances which attend the emergence of the boycott; of its value as an organizing device; of the effect upon trade unions of its abandonment as a resource of enforcement; of the extent to which it is employed; and finally of its legal and ethical aspects.

Originally, the term boycott denoted social ostracism." While still employed extensively to characterize expulsion from social intercourse, the term is now most frequently applied to certain forms of economic or industrial pressure, and more particularly to the economic pressure exerted by the members of labor organizations. The boycotting carried on by trade unions has been variously defined. By

For a detailed description of the origin of the term boycott, see H. W. Laidler, Boycotts and the Labor Struggle, p. 23. See also R. B. O'Brien, Life of Charles Stewart Parnell, p. 236 ff.

The difficulties encountered in properly defining the boycott are well described by Fritz Kestner: "From the standpoint of judicial declarations the boycott is a chameleon that is impossible of definition. In its historical origin it is not concerned with the accomplishment of a demand but is an act of vengeance, social punishment. Soon the term boycott indicated the collective withdrawal of the labor force from an employer. It then became necessary to distinguish the boycott from the strike; the strike was defined as the deliberate refusal to work for an employer and the boycott as the deliberate refusal to buy from him. At the same time boycotting also referred to the attempts of labor organizations to obstruct approaches to industrial establishments; and finally the term was applied to every manner of warfare between employer and employees that was not a direct strike.

"With the growth of industrial organization, the rules that were made within the labor unions and the employers' associations

some writers coercion of disinterested parties is considered an essential element of this trade-union device. Thus Dr. W. A. Martin, deriving his definition from various judicial opinions, defines the boycott as "a combination to cause a loss to one person by coercing others against their will, to withdraw from him their beneficial business intercourse, by threats, that unless those others do so, the combination will cause similar loss to them." While not placing so great an emphasis on the element of coercion, Dr. T. S. Adams and Dr. H. L. Sumner also consider the support of a disinterested party as a sine qua non of the boycott. "The boycott, as used in modern labor disputes," they write, " may be defined as a combination to suspend dealings with another party, and to persuade or coerce others to suspend dealings, in order to force this party to comply with some demand, or to punish him for non-compliance in the past."

An analysis of certain forms of pressure to which the term boycott is commonly applied would indicate that neither of the above elements is an essential and universal attribute of the boycott. To use a concrete illustration, when the members of a local union of bakers, who have been locked out by the master bakers of the community, combine to withdraw their patronage from the bakeries, their action is ordinarily regarded as constituting a boycott upon the unfair employers and would be so termed. Yet the act is marked neither by coercion nor by the support of a third party; it is merely a concerted withdrawal of patronage. Similarly Sidney and Beatrice Webb' speak of the "boycott of non-unionists," the term being used to describe the device of the closed shop, or the refusal of union members to work with non-unionists, and the consequent inability of the nonagainst outsiders were soon called boycotts. As soon as the same methods which these organizations employed in labor disputes, as, for example, restricting the supply of raw materials, the diversion of patronage etc., were also adopted by the cartels, it became customary to designate all of the weapons of the cartels against outsiders as boycotts" (Der Organisationszwang, pp. 344-345). The Modern Law of Labor Unions, pp. 103-104. Labor Problems, pp. 176, 196.

7 Industrial Democracy, vol. I, p. 215. See also index, p. 904.

union workman to obtain work in a union shop and of the union employer to engage the services of a non-union workman. Here, however, there may be an element of coercion, since the closed shop is often not voluntarily adopted by the employer but is forced upon him by the union. Whether coercion is present in this second illustration or not, it is possible to detect in these two totally dissimilar examples of the boycott a characteristic which will be found to be common to all forms of pressure that are given that name. This common characteristic is the restriction of market; in one case possibly supplemented by the coercion of a third party, the employer, and in the other free from coercion or persuasion. Thus the purpose of the first boycott is to restrict the selling market of the master bakers; the second limits the market of the non-union workman to non-union shops, and likewise limits the labor market of the employer to union workmen. The boycott may, therefore, be defined as a combination formed for the purpose of restricting the markets of an individual or group of individuals.

Thus defined, the boycott of course includes many forms of pressure exerted by both labor organizations and other types of industrial combinations, which because of the presence of certain peculiar characteristics have received distinguishing names. The blacklist, for instance, which is used by combinations of employers, is a boycott upon the blacklisted laborer, since his field of employment is restricted to the extent that he is unable to receive employment from the manufacturers who subscribe to the blacklist. The

8 The various forms of blacklisting which are employed by industrial combinations, not against workmen but against firms not members of the combination, contain a similar element of boycott. Thus the Michigan Retail Lumber Dealers' Association forbade "any wholesaler or manufacturer, dealer or his agent" to sell "lumber, sash, doors or blinds for building purposes to any person not a regular dealer" (W. S. Stevens, Industrial Combinations and Trusts, p. 193). This rule, of course, constituted a boycott by the combination in that it limited the market for materials of those persons who are not "regular dealers." Similar instances of such industrial or trade boycotts can be easily multiplied. See, for example, The Quarry Workers' Journal, February, 1910, p. 4; A. C. Pigou, Wealth and Welfare, p. 258; W. S. Stevens, Industrial Combinations, p. 145.

strike, likewise, constitutes a boycott of the employer by restricting his market for labor; and if the activity of pickets in keeping strike-breakers from the plant be noted, the element of boycott in the strike is still more clearly shown. The identity of the labor boycott and the closed shop has already been discussed. In spite of the logical desirability of assigning to all such forms of pressure the term boycott, the chronological priority of the terms strike, closed shop, and blacklist, not to speak of the peculiar connotations of each, would make the substitution a source of confusion rather than of clearness. In order, therefore, so to delimit this study as not to include those forms of the boycott which are in everyday speech called strikes, blacklists, and so on, the term boycott will be used to describe the efforts of labor combinations to restrict the markets of employers in the purchase and sale of economic goods, whether these goods be raw materials, materials in a partial state of completion, or finished products about to be sold to the ultimate con

sumer.

The classification of boycotts which is most commonly used is that which divides them into primary and secondary. The primary boycott has been defined as that form in which "the action is directly against the offending employer, the members of the organization simply withholding their patronage as laborers or purchasers, and inducing their fellows to do the same." Thus if the Metal Polishers' Union is involved in a dispute with the Buck's Stove and Range Company and the members of the union combine to withdraw their patronage from that firm, their action constitutes a primary boycott. If, furthermore, the boycott of the Metal Polishers is endorsed by the American Federation of Labor and the support of the members of affiliated unions is enlisted, the boycott is still primary. If, however, a boycott is imposed upon those retail merchants who are

L. D. Clark, The Law of the Employment of Labor, p. 289. See also Adams and Sumner, p. 197; B. Wyman, The Control of the Market, p. 69.