Samuel Gompers to Woodrow Wilson

long distance telephone, main 3871–2
cable address, ‘afel.’
Honorable Woodrow Wilson,
President of the United States,
The White House,
Washington.
Sir:–
Since current discussion of the past few days has been largely upon a matter of vital importance to many millions of people whose welfare has been entrusted to your keeping, and since the newspaper press is undertaking to place you in a position before the public entirely at variance with the contentions of Labor, thereon, there rests upon me an imperative duty not only to those upon whom the dead weight and burden of industry have ever fallen, but to you, that there may be avoided your being placed in apparent opposition to Labor's contentions without having had them fully and completely presented for your consideration.
The matter to which I refer was embodied in an amendment, proposed by Congressman Hughes, of New Jersey, on June 2, 1910, to a section of the Sundry Civil Appropriation bill for the year 1911, and which amendment was later proposed by Representative Hamill of New Jersey to the bill (H. R. 28775) entitled: “An Act making appropriations for the sundry civil expenses of the Government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1914, and for other purposes.” The amendment in both instances reads as follows: “Provided, however, That no part of this money shall be expended in the prosecution of any organization or individual for entering into any combination or agreement having in view the increase of wages, the shortening of hours, or bettering the condition of labor, or for any act done in furtherance thereof, NOT IN ITSELF UNLAWFUL.” The bill was adopted by both houses of Congress, but vetoed by President Taft.
I am addressing you to explain briefly why the workingmen demand as a matter of social justice and humanity that they be given relief from possible prosecution by the Department of Justice for acts not in themselves unlawful and to protect you from possible embarrassment that might result from only partial presentation of the legislation and that from the viewpoint of those opposed to Labor.
Owing to circumstances entirely beyond my control, I have been unable to request an interview with you for the presentation of the matter, even though you might have been in a position to accord it to me. By reason of the responsibility and the importance of the subject which I am discussing in this letter, I ask that you will overlook its length.
The history of those who toil has been one of pathos and bitter struggle, one of great suffering and indomitable courage. In the earlier centuries the toilers were compelled to work at the will or caprice of masters who owned their bodies and their labor power; living beings with human hearts and brains were legally and socially rated as things, property. As a result of the Barbarian Invasions that overturned the social, economic and political institutions of Europe and produced feudalism, it was expedient that changes be made in conditions of the workers— they were made serfs and villeins. Although their bodies were made free, the overlord retained an ownership in their labor power. From this status, this semi–thraldom, the workers struggled to secure more definite and more advantageous terms affecting the services they owed, until finally they reached the level of freedom of contract.
Yet liberty, equality in justice, equal opportunity, had then not been won, not is it yet assured to those who have always been the oppressed, wherever or whenever oppression exists. They had no voice or influence in determining the laws of the land, or in selecting the administrative agents who made them effective. The laws of the land had been made by those whose interests, environment, experiences, in no way touched the world of the workers; political and judicial theories, precedents, were in accord with the convictions and viewpoint of the controlling classes; intellectual life and interests were isolated from the work–a–day world; ethical and moral standards were as yet untouched by enlightened and merciful humanitarianism. It was the task of the workers to present their pleas and conceptions of justice so that established practices and standards might be broadened to include the welfare of all the people. This was the task laid upon untutored, undisciplined workers. Opposed to them were the keenest, most subtle forces vested interests could retain. Each forward step was fiercely contested. The controlling interests would not abandon its special privileges even when once lost, but sought to regain them by circumvention, sophistry, and legal chicanery.
As you know, the law is a product of two elements — the imperative and the traditional. Most of our difficulties have arisen through the second element. Precedents and judicial interpretation determined by the individual bias of the judge or by the prevailing economic and political philosophy, have been obstacles to the adoption of newer ideals of justice and to the shifting of standards to suit changing conditions.
These are some of the difficulties which we workers of today inherit from the past ages. They explain why the workers of today have to combat legal and economic theories which accord to employers certain rights to labor power, and why greater consideration has been paid to safeguarding wealth than to safeguarding the freedom of the men who help to create that wealth. The workingmen of our country ask most seriously and solemnly whether it is just that property be hedged about by inviolable sanctity, while they are denied normal activities in furtherance of the interests of human beings.
When feudal regulation of labor conditions was broken down by the disturbances resulting from the Black Death, a system of State regulation was inaugurated. This was never very effective and completely failed under the changes set up by the Industrial Revolution. With the coming of the factory system individual relations became ineffective, obsolete and powerless to protect the interests and lives of the workers. Collective action by workmen in furtherance of their own interests as opposed to those of the employers was legislated against as “conspiracies.” The old political and economic theories of justice considered that employees had no right to withhold labor power necessary to the operation of the employer's business –– the influence of the former periods when workmen were the master’s property. We, in our country, inherit many of the problems and theories from the old country, and some are of our own making. It took years to secure relief from the old conspiracy laws which curbed and restricted the workers in protecting and promoting their industrial rights and interests. When at last its seemed that efforts of the toilers were to be rewarded, then the Supreme Court of the United States, by an interpretation which amounted to judicial legislation, applied the Sherman Anti-Trust Law to trade unions in a way which virtually revived the conspiracy laws.
When the court applied the Sherman Anti-Trust law to labor organizations, it created an offense never intended by the makers of that law. As has been repeated again and again, but never refuted, as an investigation of the Congressional Record will prove, the men who drafted the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, Senators Sherman,Edmunds and George, did not intend that it should apply to organizations instituted not for profit. On March 25, 1890, when the bill was before the Senate, Senator Sherman insisted upon the following amendment: “Provided, that this act shall not be construed to apply to any arrangements, agreements, or combinations between laborers, made with a view to lessening the number of hours of labor or the increasing of their wages; nor to any arrangements, agreements, or combinations among persons engaged in horticulture or agriculture, made with a view of enhancing the price of their own agricultural or horticultural products.”
Senators George and Edmunds did not oppose the amendment, but regarded it as surplusage. The amendment was agreed to while the Senate was sitting in Committee of the whole. On March 26, when the bill came up again for consideration, Senator Stewart of Nevada said:
“The original bill has been very much improved and one of the great objections has been removed from it by the amendment offered by Senator Sherman which relieves the class of persons who would have been first under the prosecution under the original bill without amendment. * * * The bill ought now to be satisfactory to every person who is opposed to the oppression of Labor and desires to see it properly rewarded.”
In advocating the amendment Senator Hoar said in part:
“I hold we may constitutionally and wisely allow laborers to make associations * * * for the sake of maintaining and advancing their wages * * * their contracts are made with corporations who are but associations or combinations of capital on the other side. When we are promoting and even encouraging that we are encouraging what is not only lawful, wise and profitable, but absolutely essential to the existence of the commonwealth itself.”
Afterwards the bill was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, where the amendment was suppressed.Because of the failure to include this amendment in the law, organized labor was always apprehensive that attempts would be made to pervert the act from its real purpose. Nor were we mistaken, and that is why we now seek legislative relief that organized labor may not be prohibited from doing things “not in themselves unlawful.”
That which we seek it not class legislation. It is a common custom in speaking to couple together the words “labor and capital,” as though they stood for things of similar natures. Capital stands for material, tangible things, things separate and distinct from personality; labor is a human attribute, indissolubly bound up with the human body. It is that by which man expresses the thought, the purpose, the self that is his own individuality; if he is a free man, he has the right to control this means of self–expression. This he values above all, for if he lose this right to decide the granting or withholding of his own labor, then freedom ceases and slavery begins.Under the present industrial order, the individual working man is unable to maintain his right of self–assertion unaided, hence the workers instituted organizations, and have banded together to secure for themselves wider freedom of action. To classify these combinations, not for profit, and without capital stock, in the same category with corporations, trusts and monopolies, is forcing an indefensible classification and grouping together things not of the same nature.
The associations of working people, commonly known as labor unions, are dealing not with property, material things, but with labor power alone, with lives, happiness, rights and welfare of men, women and children. They are striving for the uplift and conservation of the nation itself.
The corporations, trusts and monopolies aim to create monopoly conditions, to manipulate capital and production to secure monopoly profits. It is most unjust to try to co–ordinate these two inherently different kinds of organizations and to apply to them similar regulations. Justice does not necessarily result from the application of identical provisions to all people. On the contrary, it works injustice if the conditions are dissim[i]lar and the people unequally situated. Theoretical justice only becomes real justice when the men as well as the deeds are taken into consideration.
It is impossible to legislate equitably for labor and capital under the same law. Certainly it is not class legislation to make different provisions for two things inherently different, aiming at different purposes and employing different methods. The provisions of dno law will admit of universal indiscriminate application.
This is no “special privilege” or “exemption” that organized labor has been asking. Our demand for justice is that working men and their organizations shall not be prosecuted for entering into any combination or agreement having in view the increasing of wages, the shortening of hours, or the bettering of conditions of labor, or for any act done in furtherance thereof “NOT IN ITSELF UNLAWFUL.”
Your attention is respectfully and particularly called to those last four words that have been so persistently and unfairly suppressed by the press and our opponents. We are not seeking to be permitted to do unlawful acts, but are demanding that the rights of which we have been deprived by judicial interpretation by restored to us. We are not asking to be “exempt” from the application of a law of a law which properly applies to labor organizations as well as to other voluntary associations organized not for profit, but we are asking that inherent differences that exist be recognized by the laws and the courts as well as by reason.
The mere fact that a law or a legal precedent exists, does not necessarily imply that it works justice. Oppression and wrong may become established, and under the cloak of authority and regularity take on a prestige and a sanctity usually ascribed to accepted rules of justice. These are the insidious forces that have fought labor under the guise of conspiracy laws, and now seek to accomplish their purpose by interpreting the Sherman Anti-Trust law as a modernized conspiracy act.
Those rights which we wish restored are rights necessary to conducting the normal activities of labor organizations. Labor organizations are formed to protect the workers and their rights against the cupidity of employers and combinations of employers dealing in the products created by labor power. The right to strike, to withhold labor power, is essential to the maintenance of the freedom of the workers. It would be impossible to retain present advantages, or to increase wages or better conditions of work without the right or the power to strike, not only as individuals but as organizations. Organized labor does not advocate strikes. On the contrary we deplore the necessity for them, but we know, and we know from actual experience, how powerless and helpless workmen would be to protect themselves without the right and power to strike. To make acts in furtherance of these purposes either enjoinable or punishable both by fines and imprisonment takes from organized labor that which gives it virility and effectiveness.
The men and the organizations that have instituted suits against labor uninons under this law, the methods that have been employed and the charges made, make it manifest beyond a doubt that the purpose of the prosecutions is not to prevent restraint of trade or competition, but to disrupt or make ineffective labor organizations.
Those who have been out in the ditches, the factories, in the grinding toil of modern industry, know what the labor movment has done for human progress and welfare. Those who work for the Steel Corporations, the Tobacco Trust, know what it is to deal with organized employers without collective self–protection. In the light of these facts, which you well know, would it not be well to consider seriously whether or not this fear of alleged “conspiracy” of labor associations should be allowed to prevent an effort to arrive at standards of justice that do not sacrifice human rights to the right to conduct business?
Peaceful, rightful attempts to secure advantages for labor have been deemed “combinations in restraint of trade.” The workingmen’s Amalgamated Council of New Orleans struck to induce the employers to employ none but union labor — a purpose certainly not in restraint of trade. No violence was charged, and yet the court ruled “the defendants were in restraint of trade.” In the case of Loewe vs. Lawlor, it was offered and accepted as evidence of “conspiracy” that out of 82 manufacturers of hats in the United States, 70 were in agreement with the union of hat makers to maintain the highest standards of wages and other labor conditions. Is it any wonder that the men of labor have been forced to the conclusion that judicial interpretation of conspiracy is synonymous with successful hostility to the humanizing conditions of unionism? It is absurd to argue that activities of organized labor are intended to destroy or injure business; such a result would defeat the very purpose they have in view.Even should the activities of labor organizations be rightfully classified as conspiracies, has not the time come when it must be considered whether these “conspiracies” of organized labor do not do more to further the advancement of humanity and national welfare than the property interests which have been heretofore carefully safeguarded? It is no man of straw that we fear in the application of the Sherman Anti-Trust law to organized labor. While it is unthinkable that the organized labor movement could be crushed out of existence, yet the repression of normal activities, rousing of resentment at injustice among the workers, denial to them of legal methods of redress, would lead to situations and conditions which thoughtful, patriotic citizens could not consider without dread.
This struggle of the working people to secure individual rights and liberty has not been confined to our own country. In England the same problems have been confronted and solved. In 1824 Parliament enacted that no workman should be “subject or liable to any indictment or prosecution for conspiracy, or to any other criminal information or punishment whatever, "underscore" rend="inherit">under the common or statute law, for ‘entering into any combination to obtain an advance , or to fix the rates of wages, or to lessen or alter the hours or duration of the time of working, or to decrease the quantity of work, or to induce another to depart from his service before the end of the time or term for which he is hired, or to quit or return to his work before the same shall be finished, or, not being hired, to refuse to enter into work or employment, or to regulate the mode of carrying on any manufacture, trade, or biusiness, or the management thereof.”For a while the toilers were released from “legal shackles,” but the courts by judicial legislation and interpretation, there, as here, sought again to bind on some of the chains. As soon as the legislative relief was given against the judicial theory of “criminal conspiracy” under the common law, the interests took refuge behind the doctrine of “civil conspiracy.” Finally the workmen won their fight by securing the Trade Disputes Act of 1906, which forbids action for1. Any act done by a combination of persons which would not be actionable if done without such combination (s. 1)2. Any act which merely induces a breach of a contract of employment, or interferes with trade, business or employment, or the right of some other person to dispose of his capital or labor as he wills. ( s. 3)3. Any alleged responsibility by a Trade Union, as a body, for the tortious acts of its officials or members (s. 4)Nor is it amiss when I take the liberty of respectfully calling your attention to the declarations of the Democratic party national conventions of 1908 and 1912 upon this, the subject matter under discussion.
My presentation of the cause of organized labor had not been from the legal viewpoint, for I am not a lawyer. But even could I present the legal phases, I doubt whether that would aid in determining justice for the workers. Often justice is obscured in the mazes of legal theories and technicalities. The law is not an unfailing source of justice, it can only approximate that ideal as it is rendered flexible enough to adjust to new conditions and needs. That is what we ask for in the legislation we seek.
As I have already stated, it is not my purpose to present here a legal argument in defense or in futherance of Labor's position with respect to the principle involved in legislation of this character, nor can I, in this lletter, make a sociological or an economic presentation of the subject. My main purpose is that you may give this letter the consideration it deserves at the present time, that you may arrest your final judgment, defer the determination of your course until an opportunity is afforded when you may accord the privilege of a conference in which a more complete and comprehensive presentation of this matter may be made to you.
It is earnestly hoped that your final conclusion upon this entire matter, which is fraught with such far-reaching consequences to the rights and welfare of the toilers of our country, will be reached only after the most complete consideration of it in all its bearings and all that is involved therein.