While neither of the great parties has definitely promised to support this particular measure, one party has made a vague promise to restrict injunctions, and the leaders of the progressive wings of both are quite definite about it.

Nearly half of the House of Representatives voted for the repeal of the Sherman law as applied against union boycotts.

Senator La Follette has demanded the abolition of this species of injunction, and Governor Woodrow Wilson has accused our federal courts of "elaborating a theory of conspiracy destined to bring 'the sympathetic strike' and what is termed 'the secondary boycott' under legal condemnation." Such reforms are not as radical as might appear to Americans, for the boycott is legal in Germany, while the crime of "conspiracy" was repealed in Great Britain in 1875, and the rights of strikers were further protected in that country by the repeal of the Taff Vale decision against picketing a few years ago, and yet unions are in no very strong position there.

And weak as they are, the talk of compulsory arbitration is growing, and it seems only question of time until some modification of it is adopted.

And, though the abuse of injunctions and the other forms of anti-union laws and decisions now prevailing will probably be done away with in this country, there is little doubt that here also employers will use some great coal or railroad strike as a pretext for enacting a compulsory arbitration law.[73] Similarly, as governments continue to take on new industrial functions, great importance is attached to the right of government employees, now denied, to organize and to join unions.