A History of Organized Felony and Folly - The Clarence Darrow ...

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A History of Organized Felony and Folly Louis rioters in a speech at Carnegie Hall where he became involved in a tilt with the late Theodore Roosevelt. But these do not exhaust Mr. Gompers' utterances on the subject of lav/. When the question of an eight-hour day for railroad employes was being agitated in Congress, Mr. Gompers said: "We are looking to the railroad brotherhoods to see that the eight-hour day goes into effect, law or no law." On the face of it, this is an innocent looking statement, but it might easily hearten a thug to dynamite a bridge during a railroad strike to enforce the eight-hour day. Another public utterance of Mr. Gompers is more pertinent, for in it he not only counsels the violation of injunctions but asserts that he himself would have no hesitancy in doing so. Following an application for an injunction by the Bucks Stove & Range Co., Mr. Gompers, in a Labor Day address at the Jamestown Exposition, said: "I desire to be clearly understood that when any court undertakes without warrant of law by the injunction process to deprive me of my personal rights and my personal liberty guaranteed by the Constitution, I shall have no hesitancy in asserting and exercising those rights." This statement, it seems clear, the speaker wished to have interpreted as placing him and his followers above the process of injunction. After the order had been issued, Mr. Gompers, writing in the "Federationist," said: "They have a lawful right to do as they wish, all the Van Cleaves, all the injunctions, all the fool or vicious opponents to the contrary notwithstanding. * * * Go to with your injunctions." The two foregoing statements refer to injunction pro- cesses, but Mr. Gompers had something to say respecting the enactment and enforcement of all law when he testified as a witness before the Lockwood Investigating Committee. He admitted many abuses on the part of labor unions, and when it was suggested to him that they might be corrected by law, he protested. The follov/ing extracts from his testimony pre- sent some of the shifts that Mr. Gompers would substitute for law: 72
A History of Organized Felony and Folly "I would use every influence I could to bring about a bet- ter course of conduct ." "There is no patent road to the elimination of all mistakes and errors of the people " others "I would use any way possible except the law "I would rather bear the ills I have than fly to ." "It can only be corrected by time ." "We must be patient. The world was not made in a day. There is a rough struggle of the workers for the improvement of their condition—time develops discipline." In answer to the question: "Have you any way whatever on God's earth of correcting these ills?" Mr. Gompers replied: "It cannot be done immediately." Yet, Mr. Gompers is not an anarchist in the sense that he is opposed to the enactment and enforcement of all laws. He frankly likes laws that favor labor unionism. Before the Lockwood Committee, Mr. Gompers went on record for one-sided contracts that bind the employer without binding the employe. He declared for "proximate stability of wages, but not fixed wages," and asserted that prosperity should be used for increasing wages but depression should not be used for diminishing them. He reiterated his opposition to interference with labor unions by the courts, but when he was asked whether he would go to the legislature for laws to protect workers against in- dustrial accidents, he replied: "Certainly. It is the only way I can get -such protection." Asked whether employers and the public, when suffering from labor union oppression, might go to the legislature for redress, he replied: "No sir!" "And this "Yes sir!" position is perfectly logical?" It seems idle to expect any abatement of union lawless- ness as long as the head of the movement publicly asserts such a position with respect to the law. 73 ."
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