STRIKE STRATEGY
sues only strengthens the evils. Mass violation of such anti-strike legislation and ukases is the way to deal with them. No injunction denying the right of picketing can stand in the face of a rigid determination of strikers to picket notwithstanding. The collapse of the Kansas Industrial Court when Howat's miners struck in spite of it was typical of what happens to such tyrannical laws generally when confronted by a militant labor movement. The breakdown of the injunction against the New York cloak-makers as a result of their mass violation of it is another case in point, several thousand workers being arrested in the fight.
The time was when the A. F. of L. advocated officially the application of such aggressive tactics in cases of injunctions. But in these days of intensified class collaboration the bureaucratic policy grows weak and insipid. Now its fight against injunctions amounts to little more than sentimental protests and fruitless attempts to line up "Labor's friends" in the two old parties to vote against the right of the courts to issue injunctions in labor disputes.
5—Free Speech Fights.
Similarly, militant tactics can be used with good effect when the companies, through their city government agencies, attempt to prohibit free speech and the holding of public meetings during strikes or organizing campaigns. The thing to do is to hold meetings anyhow and go to jail if necessary. A well-waged free speech fight is never lost. Not even in the black steel districts of Pennsylvania, where the town officials are usually also steel company officials or stockholders, could they prevent us from having meetings in the campaign of 1918–19. They barred meetings in Homestead, Braddock, Rankin, McKeesport, Duquesne, and other cities, but in each case we defeated them by taking to the streets in spite of their official ukases.
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