Labor's Fight Against the Injunction
A stirring call to action from the American Federation of Labor regarding the use of courts to suppress workers' free speech.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The very great interest that has been manifested by the trades unionists of our country and by fair-minded men and women who sympathize with all practical and substantial efforts for human uplift regarding the injunction proceedings of the Buck's Stove and Range company against the officers of the American Federation of Labor presages results that in the end are sure to be beneficial to all Americans. The right to exercise free speech and the right to publish a free and untrammeled press are personally dear to all men and women who have any conception of the hardships and the battles that were fought to found this great republic. Only within comparatively recent years has there been any material attempt by the courts to interfere with these rights. Mobs have interfered with them, communities have done so at times, but for the courts to do so is comparatively new. The labor movement asks no immunity from libel laws. It is perfectly willing to be subject to the same penalties as any other class of citizens. But we resent an interference with these fundamental rights by court decrees, and we shall stand against it until the people of our country are convinced that we are right and en masse come to our support.
“The labor movement asks no immunity from libel laws. It is perfectly willing to be subject to the same penalties as any other class of citizens. But we resent an interference with these fundamental rights by court decrees.”
This 1910 commentary reflects a pivotal moment in American labor history when injunctions were used to break strikes. Today's labor disputes, though often mediated by different legal structures, still revolve around the core question of whether collective worker power constitutes an illegal restraint of trade or a protected civil liberty.
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