THE LAW AS TO BOYCOTTS

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 18, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 3.

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THE LAW AS TO BOYCOTTS.

THE Los Angeles Times in a recent issue says: "Yet another declaration as to the legal status of the boycott was rendered a few weeks ago, in an opinion of the Supreme Court of Michigan, in a case which arose out of a boycott of a firm of mill owners, by striking union teamsters. The strikers picketed the mills and issued circulars establishing a boycott on the firm. The court prefaced an injunction against the strikers with a statement of the law regulating the relations between employer and employee. According to the court, the law protects employers in the right to employ whom they please, at prices they and their employees can agree upon, and to discharge them at the expiration of their term of service for violation of their contract. So, also, the laborers have the right to fix a price upon their labor, and to refuse to work unless that price is obtained. They have this right singly or in combination. They may organize in order to improve their condition and secure better wages, and may use persuasion to induce men to join their organization or refuse to work except for an established wage. They may present their cause to the public in newspapers or circulars in a peaceable way, and with no attempt at coercion. This, however, marks the limit of either party's right. The injunction granted by the court restrained the strikers from picketing the premises and from distributing boycott circulars which were said to embody threatening language."
Commenting upon this decision, Bradstreet's says: "Labor, as the decision illustrates, possesses freedom of action and of combination, but that freedom must not be construed to include intimidation or coercion of others whose right to labor or to employ labor is equally free."