that positive proof must be adduced that a great combination was doing harm before it could be touched; the general danger of vast aggregations of capital was left out of account.
Another form of unlawful behaviour by trusts was their misuse of the patent laws. The question arose whether the maker of a patented device could insist that the purchaser must use also the seller's unpatented appliances in connexion with the materials employed. On this point the Supreme Court went through various stages of opinion. In the Dick case (March 1912) it held that such restrictions on the purchaser were legal. About two months later it held, in the “Bathtub Trust” case, that there could not be a monopoly of the product of patented machinery.
Labour Questions.—A long time was needed to make the discovery that closely connected with the railway question and the trust question was the legal and economic status of those who labour. Beginning in the 18th century with the English legal principle that a combination of labourers to raise their wages was unlawful, the United States changed its position and early accepted and for many years acted on the counter principle that strikes were lawful. No legal obstacle was put in the way of the organization, first, of local trade unions, then of nation-wide unions for single trades, and finally of national unions combining many trades. To this was slowly added by the unions the principle of the “right to labour,” which means both that it is the duty of the community to see that the worker has a job, and also that at least the skilled workers have a kind of title in their employment, so that it is contrary to good morals for a “scab” to take the place of a striker. When the railways came under Federal supervision and control, the railway employees, especially the skilled workers, began to feel that they, as well as the shipping and travelling public, were entitled to protection by the Government. When, during Roosevelt's administration, the President designated an informal commission to negotiate a settlement of a wage dispute in the anthracite coal-mines in Pennsylvania, he made almost the first acknowledgment that such industries as fuel production and steel-making were national in their character and required national regulation.
The legal position of labour unions in these controversies was brought to a head by suits of national importance against unions.
The first test case was that of the Buck Stove and Range Co. against the American Federation of Labor, which was really a suit between a national labour union and a national organization of manufacturers. The charge was that the Federation, by posting the Company in its publications as “unfair” to labour, was boycotting and thus infringing legal rights. In its evolution the case turned into long-drawn-out proceedings against Samuel Gompers, president of the Federation, for contempt of court, on the ground that he had refused to obey a court order to abandon the boycott. After seven years of shifting of the case from one court to another, Gompers escaped the 12 months' imprisonment to which he had been sentenced. In 1910 a suit was decided against a union of the Danbury (Conn.) hatters, who had attempted to boycott the products of a local hat manufacturer. The jury found a verdict of $74,000 damages, part of which was eventually collected from members of the local union who had property, and refunded by the general trades union.
These court trials accented the labour controversy and led to violent strikes. In the midst of them sprang up a new labour organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.), which was an attempt on a large scale to organize the unskilled labourers, and also to reach the goal of one big union for all trades. The movement was unwelcome to the unions of skilled labour, because the unskilled were so much more numerous that they could always outvote the skilled, and were sure to insist on an equalization of wages, which would reduce the rates of the highly paid. For several years, strikes were frequent and often accompanied by acts of violence. In several instances labour unions supported their leaders in arson and murder. One such case was the blowing up of the Los Angeles Times building in Oct. 1910, for which two brothers named McNamara, one of them secretary of the International Association of Bridge and Constructional Iron Workers, were convicted and sentenced.
Another phase of the labour situation was the spread of employers' liability laws through various states, and an Act of Congress of April 22 1908 for the protection of employees of interstate railways. Minimum Wage Acts also were passed in a few states with the purpose of protecting the employees in industries that required chiefly unskilled or slightly skilled women. In June 1912 Congress added to its previous enactment of an eight-hour maximum regular day for public employees, by providing that all contract work for the Federal Government must also be on the eight-hour basis. The effect of these movements was that labour came to be recognized as one of the elements of production that must be considered; as most of the labourers were voters they brought to bear powerful influences on state Legislatures and Congress in favour of labour. On the other hand, the courts, particularly those of the states, were slow to recognize the changes in industrial conditions which made protection of wage earners necessary, and many statutes intended for the betterment of labour conditions were held invalid.
In addition, the courts began to use a system of labour injunctions; workmen, labour unions and members were forbidden to perform acts, which if performed would presumably be a violation of a statute and would therefore lead to prosecution, in which the question of guilt or innocence would be settled by a jury. If the offense were transformed by the injunction into a defiance of the Court, then the Court itself would decide on the responsibility and affix a penalty not specifically laid down in any statute. Labour was opposed to unlimited immigration, and nearly all the measures for restricting immigration were originally proposed by labour unions, particularly the convict and contract labour Acts. For many years there was a Labor or Socialist Labor national party, which regularly nominated a candidate for the presidency and cast a small popular vote. It did not succeed because there was a standing Socialist party which cast from half a million to a million votes and absorbed the Socialist vote; while the labour leaders saw that if they withdrew from the main political parties they would set the farmers and traders and professional men against them. Hence, in all the shifts of politics very few avowed Labour candidates were elected to the state Legislatures or Congress. Labour agents and agitators failed therefore, to influence the public at large—their speeches and literature were little regarded outside their own constituencies. Furthermore, the members of the labour unions, about 5,000,000 all told, were not more than one-eighth of those men and women in the United States who worked with their hands.
Foreign Relations, 1907-13.—In the pressure for action on social and political matters, foreign affairs received even less than the usual meagre attention given them by the American people. The tradition of isolation was a strong force in the public mind, notwithstanding the rapidly growing foreign trade and the influence of the great number of immigrants. The thing that brought the United States closest to European complications was the possession of the Philippine Is., which made the United States an Asiatic power, and compelled it to be interested in the fiscal and territorial conditions of China on the basis of the “open door” system proposed by Secretary Hay in 1901. In the western hemisphere the Americans upheld the Monroe Doctrine as applied by Roosevelt to prevent the use of force by European countries to collect debts and claims from delinquent American powers. Three steps had already been taken in pursuit of the Caribbean policy: the protectorate of Cuba, the Panama Canal undertaking, and the lodgment in San Domingo.
In the Hague conference of 1907 the U.S. delegates urged arbitration; and in accordance with the general principles put forth at that conference, Secretary Root in 1908 secured 25 arbitration treaties with as many countries. The United States and Great Britain arranged (Jan. 27 1909) to refer to the Hague tribunal their long-standing dispute on the Newfoundland fisheries, the first really important case brought before the tribunal. The result was a decision (Sept. 7 1910), which brought to a satisfactory termination the difficulty. President Taft, through Secretary Knox, secured in 1911 arbitration treaties with Great Britain and France. The Senate insisted on inserting in these
