It can be limited in its application to those industries where the unions really occupy a position of strategic importance like railroads and coal mines, and it can be used to attach to the government those employees that are unable to help themselves.

I have mentioned those weaker groups of employees who would be unable to improve their condition very materially except by government aid, and, even when so raised to a somewhat higher level, have no power to harm capitalism.

Compulsory arbitration or some similar device must therefore replace such crudely restrictive and oppressive measures as have hitherto been applied to the unions.
In the United States all "dangerous" strikes are at present throttled by court injunctions forbidding the strikers to take any effective action, and boycotts are held to be forbidden by the Sherman law originally directed against the "trusts." Recently the Supreme Court decided that the officers of the American Federation of Labor were not to be imprisoned for violation of the latter statute.

But the decision was purely on technical grounds, and the court upheld unanimously the application of the law to the unions.

There is little question that the attorney for the manufacturers, Daniel Davenport, was right when he thus summed up the court's opinion:-- "It held that the boycott is illegal; that the victim of the boycott has the right to go into court of equity for protection by injunction; that such court has the right to enjoin any and every act done in enforcing the boycott, including the sending out of boycott notices, circulars, etc., that the alleged constitutional right of free speech and free press affords the boycotter no immunity for such publication; that for a violation of the injunction the party violating it is liable to be punished both civilly and criminally." Against this law and the use of injunctions in labor disputes the Federation of Labor has introduced a bill through Congressman W.B.
Wilson, which aims to free the unions from these legal obstacles by enacting that no right to continue the relation of employer to employee or to carry on business shall be construed as property or a property right; and that no agreement between two or more persons concerning conditions of employment or its termination shall constitute a conspiracy or an offense against the law unless it would be unlawful if done by a single individual, and that, therefore, such an act is not subject to injunctions.