OFFICERS NATIONAL METAL TRADES ASSOCIATION 1911-1912 President-F. C. CALDWELL, H. W. Caldwell & Son Co., Chicago, Ill. First Vice-President-HENRY D. SHARpe, Second Vice-President-W. A. LAYMAN, Treasurer--HOWARD P. EELLS, Bucyrus Company, Cleveland, Ohio. Commissioner-ROBERT WUEST, Cleveland, Ohio. "When bands of marauding dynamiters blow up our buildings, our homes, our offices, can we appeal to their reason? No, because they haven't got it." (Dr. Lyman Abbott.) DETROIT, MICHIGAN : : : JUNE, 1911 A MONTHLY PUBLICATION BY THE NATIONAL FOUNDERS' ASSOCIATION AND National METAL TRADES ASSOCIATION IN THE INTEREST OF MEMBERS AND THEIR WORKMEN. UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT DECISION in THE GOMPERS-MITCHELL-MORRISON CONTEMPT CASE Principles Involved Not Personal. All Important Points Decided Against Contentions of Unionism. The importance of the recent decision of the United States Supreme Court in the contempt proceedings against these national labor leaders is not properly understood. The question of whether Mr. Gompers and his associates should go to jail in this particular case for disobedience of the court's decree was the least important aspect of the case, for this would limit it to the lives and welfare of individual persons, who will die and be forgotten. The lasting questions were (1) whether boycotting was illegal; (2) whether an injunction could be issued to restrain it; (3) whether the constitutional right of free speech prevented the prohibition by injunction of written and oral utterances in furtherance of the boycott; and (4) whether the disobedience of an injunction could be punished by the court without trial by jury. In every one of these important questions which concern the interests of employers and employees alike in the future, the court decided against the contention of the labor leaders. |