resort to the courts for a remedy. But all this time there was a strong undercurrent of discontent, and for the past year it has required all the influence of the conservative element of the profession to hold this in check and maintain a sentiment in favor of peaceful and legal reform.
The first mistake was made at the initial attempt to apply the rule. As was to be expected, the players chafed at first under the unaccustomed yoke. Hines, of Providence, declared that rather than submit to that club's reservation he would stay idle for a year. The construction was then evolved that even this would not free the player from the reservation,—that, though the term of his contract had expired, and though the reservation was so distasteful that he would prefer the loss of a year's salary, yet he would still be held by it. That is to say, the life-estate was indefeasible: the brand of the club once upon the man, it might never be removed by any act of his own. A practical illustration of the working of this construction was given in the case of Charlie Foley. During the season of 1883 he contracted a malady which incapacitated him for play. He was laid off without pay, though still held subject to the direction of his club. In the fall he was placed among the players reserved by the club, though he had not been on the club's pay-roll for months. The following spring he was still unable to play, and the Buffalo Club refused either to sign or release him. He recovered somewhat, and offered his services to the club, but it still refused to sign him. Having been put to great expense in securing treatment, his funds were exhausted, and it became absolutely necessary for him to do something. He had offers from several minor clubs, to whom he would still have been a valuable player, but on asking for his release from Buffalo it was again refused. He was compelled to remain idle all that summer, without funds to pay for medical treatment; and then, to crown all, the Buffalo Club again reserved him in the fall of 1884.
The second abuse was a clear violation of the spirit of the rule, and a direct breach of contract on the part of several clubs. A clause in the old form of contract gave the club the right to release any player at any time, with or without cause, by giving him twenty days' notice. Of course this was meant to apply to individual cases and total releases. But several clubs, seeing in this a convenient means of escaping the payment of the last month's salary, gave all their players the twenty days' notice on September 10, and on October 1 dismissed them, instead of on November 1 as the contracts stipulated. One club did not even go to the trouble of giving the notice, but, in open disregard of its contract obligations, dismissed its players October 1. Two of the men had courage enough to bring suit, and they recovered judgment,
