May Establish Weighty Precedent

MAY ESTABLISH WEIGHTY PRECEDENT.

A Chicago labor union has been fined $1,000 for violating an injunction restraining it from interfering with the business of printing firms of that city. This fine has been imposed upon the union as a corporation and is the first instance of the kind in the country. The case is to be appealed to the supreme court, and if the decision of the lower court is sustained, a notable precedent will have been established. The important issue involved is the responsibility of a labor organization for its acts when those acts result in damage to business. Labor unions have always fought shy of specific incorporation for the reason among others, no doubt, that such incorporation would certainly carry responsibility for acts damaging to business. But why should they not be responsible? The organization is brought about, of course, for the advantages resulting from the increased power and weight carried by numbers. When this increase of power coming from aggregation is used to break agreements and damage business by preventing other men working in the place of strikers, thereby enforcing idleness and destruction of business, why should the organization which creates the power to do these things be held responsible for these results? Without the union, no such results could be produced. The power of the organization makes such acts possible and without the unity produced by the organization such results could not be produced. The organization should properly be held responsible for the results it produces.