labor power, is inseparable from the living bodies of the workers. It is intimately associated with the physical personality, and is the outward expression of the mentality, the ideas, the individuality of the workers. The labor of a human being, labor power, is the creative expressions of inner mentality. It cannot be a commodity or an article of commerce unless human beings are nothing but material things or legally held as property.

After centuries of struggle the toilers established their physical freedom, but industrial freedom was denied them under judicial interpretation of their rights. Judicial theory looks backward for its sanctions; it is guided by precedents. Judicial opinions square themselves by the past, not by the present. There resulted a strange legal anomaly; workers were free, but part of their personality, their labor power, was the property of their employers who had property rights in the labor power of employees. For it is impossible to separate the power to labor, the power to produce, from the bodies of the workers.

Denial of industrial freedom robs physical freedom of its reality and value. All Americans have had the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" since the revolution based on these principles found in the Declaration of Independence, and the establishment of our Republic. But life is something bigger than a declaration of political principle. The workers of America spend most of their lives in mines, workshops, factories, stores, etc., and have felt all the bitterness of industrial unfreedom. They have been denied real choice in matters relating to their employment; they have been denied the right to promote their own welfare; they have been denied the right to life in its real significance.

Under modern industrial conditions workers as individuals are powerless to protect themselves against employers' aggressions, or to increase wages, shorten hours of labor, and improve their general conditions of work and life. Only through organization can the workers present their views of rights, defend or advance their interests, seek redress of grievances, and establish their best concepts and ideals of justice. The development of large-scale industries and trusts makes labor organization doubly imperative. There was no longer the slightest probability of individual personal contact between employers and employees. Absentee employers conducted all dealings with employees through superintendents or foremen who were held responsible only for efficiency and profits. Concentration of industry and trust organization dehumanized the relations between employers and employees and thus helped to retain the theory that labor power-the labor of a human being-is

a commodity. Trusts waged war upon labor organizations with well-nigh incredible savagery and with every conceivable method and device. Against these attacks the workers had to protect themselves in the industrial and the legal fields. It was necessary to secure some change in the Sherman anti-trust law-a law that had proved powerless to stay the increasing number of trusts but had deprived workers of their rights and their liberty.

The labor sections of the Clayton Anti-Trust Act are a great victory for organized labor. In no other country in the world is there an enunciation of fundamental principles comparable to the incisive, virile statement in section 6.

Those words, the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce, are sledge-hammer blows to the wrongs and injustice so long inflicted upon the workers. The declaratory legislation, "The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce," is the Industrial Magna Charta upon which the working people will rear their structure of industrial freedom. Industrial freedom is necessary for human welfare and progress. The victory won by the united American labor movement is a victory for all humanity.

311. Legal Exemption of Labor Combinations 32

BY ALLYN A. YOUNG

The sixth section of the Clayton act, exempting labor combinations from the condemnation of the anti-trust laws, is as follows:

The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. Nothing contained in the anti-trust laws shall be construed to forbid the existence and operation of labor organizations, instituted for the purposes of mutual help, and not having capital stock or conducted for profit, or to forbid or restrain individual members of such organizations from lawfully carrying out the legitimate objects thereof; nor shall such organizations, or the members thereof, be held or construed to be illegal combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade, under the anti-trust laws.

The declaration, "The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce," is little more than an empty blague, and the permission given to individual members of labor organizations to "lawfully carry out the legitimate objects thereof" is at once harmless and unavailing. If there is any effectiveness in the section it is in the clause, "nor shall such organizations, or the members thereof, 32 Adapted from "The Sherman Act and the New Anti-Trust Legislation," in the Journal of Political Economy, XXIII, 417-421 (1915).

be held or construed to be illegal combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade, under the anti-trust laws."

Now no action has ever been brought for the dissolution of a labor union under the Sherman act. But Mr. Gompers, testifying before the House Committee on the Judiciary, said that labor combinations exist only by tolerance of the Attorney-General. If Mr. Gompers' interpretation of the Sherman act is correct, if that statute condemns unions merely because they are combinations for collective bargaining, then it must be admitted that their specific exemption in this section is a matter of some importance. But there are reasons for thinking Mr. Gompers mistaken.

In the first place, there is enough difference between the sort of "monopoly" which a labor union seeks to establish and such monopolistic industrial combinations as are clearly condemned by the Sherman act to make it uncertain whether the courts would put them in the same category. One is in principle an inclusive, the other an exclusive, monopoly. It is true that railroad mergers, such as were condemned in the Northern Securities and Union Pacific cases, are in some respects "inclusive" combinations. But the St. Louis Terminal Railroad case is a more instructive precedent. The railroad in question has a virtual monopoly of terminal facilities in St. Louis. A suit for dissolution was brought against it under the Sherman act. The Supreme Court did not grant a dissolution order, but merely directed the company so to reconstruct its organization as to provide that new companies might participate in its ownership and be given the advantage of its services on equal terms with the railroads then in control of it. The parallel is not perfect, for the Terminal Railroad of St. Louis is a natural monopoly. But the case suggests that if similar suits had been brought against labor combinations the outcome might have been that the court would merely have insisted that admission to union membership must be granted to all applicants on fair terms.

In the second place, it is doubtful even whether the courts would have deemed themselves authorized by the Sherman act to interfere in any degree either with the conditions of admission to union membership or with the ordinary trade agreement which unions attempt to enforce. For agreements among working-men to fix wages or hours or conditions of employment have only an indirect and incidental effect upon interstate trade or commerce, while the courts have consistently held that the Sherman act covers only agreements which have a direct and primary effect upon such trade or commerce. In the third place the Sherman act has been brought to bear upon working-men, not because labor unions in themselves are labor

monoplies, and as such are in restraint of competition, but merely because strikes and boycotts have the effect of interfering in some degree with the free flow of goods from one state to another. This is, of course, what the labor interests wanted changed. It is not clear, however, that this section alters the law in this respect. I cannot imagine that the courts will hold that the provision that neither labor organizations nor their members shall be "held or construed to be combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade" covers cases of this kind. If it does, a doubt as to the constitutionality of the section at once arises. It is true that the Supreme Court has recently held that a Missouri anti-trust statute is not in violation of the federal Constitution, despite the fact that the statute specifically exempts labor combinations. But with respect to the matter in hand the question would be whether an exemption of such interference with the "free flow of commerce" as comes from the activities of labor combinations would not amount to a denial of “due process of law" to the members of such other combinations as are condemned for similarly interfering with commerce. It is not a question of the legality of the restraint of competition among working-men. The question is whether labor combinations may restrain interstate commerce in goods while such restraint is not permitted to other combinations.

There is, however, another provision in the Clayton act which may give labor combinations virtual immunity from the operations of the Sherman act. This section (the twentieth) prohibits the granting of injunctions by federal courts in labor disputes "unless necessary to prevent irreparable injury to property or to a property right," and specifies that such injunction shall not prohibit striking, picketing, or boycotting. This in itself does not prohibit civil suits for damages or criminal persecutions under the Sherman act. Probably it does not prohibit the granting of injunctions on the petition of the government, for the general provisions of the section apply only to cases "between employers and employees." But, so far as the delimitation of the scope of the Sherman act is concerned, such considerations as these become unimportant in view of the fact that the section concludes with the sweeping statement, "nor shall any of the acts specified in this paragraph be considered or held to be violations of any law of the United States." This is the real exemption section. Its constitutionality is a matter about which there is some doubt, but its unconstitutionality is by no means assured. If the courts sustain it, labor unions will have been effectively freed from the restraints of the Sherman act.

H. REVOLUTIONARY UNIONISM

Sabotage is:

312. Sabotage

a) A Definition of Sabotagess

BY ARTURO M. GIOVANNITTI

1. Any conscious and wilful act on the part of one or more workers intended to slacken and reduce the output of production in the industrial field, or to restrict trade and reduce the profits in the commercial field, in order to secure from their employers better conditions or to enforce those promised or maintain those already prevailing, when no other way of redress is open.

2. Any skilful operation on the machinery of production intended not to destroy it or permanently render it defective, but only temporarily to disable it and put it out of running condition in order to make impossible the work of scabs and thus to secure the complete and real stoppage of work during a strike.

Whether you agree or not, sabotage is this and nothing but this. It is not destructive. It has nothing to do with violence, neither to life nor to property. It is nothing more or less than the chloroforming of the organism of production, the "knock-out drops" to put to sleep and out of harm's way the ogres of steel and fire that watch and multiply the treasures of King Capital.

b) Go Cannies

BY ARTURO M. GIOVANNITTI

It must be said with especial emphasis that sabotage is not and must not be made a systematic hampering of production, that it is ́not meant as a perpetual clogging of the workings of industry, but that it is a simple expedient of war, to be used only in time of actual warfare with sobriety and moderation, and to be laid by when the truce intervenes.

The form of sabotage which was formerly known as Go Cannie consists purely and simply in "going slow" and "taking it easy" when the bosses do the same in regard to wages.

"Adapted from the Introduction to Pouget's Sabotage, 13-14. Copyright by Charles H. Kerr & Co. (1913). Written in the Essex County Jail, Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Adapted from the Introduction to Pouget's Sabotage, 22-25. Copyright by Charles H. Kerr & Co. (1913).