other things, preventing them from interfering with the employees or the miners of said mines.

Mr. DE ARMOND. Do you object to that feature?

Mr. GOMPERS. Yes. You have the right to interfere with me so long as you do not invade my rights, so long as you are

Mr. DE ARMOND. Can I interfere with you without invading your right?

Mr. GOMPERS. Yes, sir.

Mr. DE ARMOND. Is it an interference unless I do invade your right?

Mr. GOMPERS. As to the technical term I will not pretend to say, but as to the intent.

Mr. DE ARMOND. Will you please read that clause?

Mr. GOMPERS. "Preventing them from interfering with the employees of the owners of said mines." For instance, in my addressing the committee, any member could interfere with the continuity of a statement, and yet it would not be an unlawful interference, and might not be an improper interference, and it might be a perfectly proper interference.

Mr. DE ARMOND. Suppose it went far enough to interfere with your personal welfare or your property?

Mr. GOMPERS. Then I have my remedy at law. There are laws provided by which my rights can be protected from your unwarrantable and improper interference.

Mr. DE ARMOND. Is that all in that clause, just the interference with the employees of the company? Or was there more of it? Mr. GOMPERS. I shall read further if I may be permitted.

Mr. DE ARMOND. I ask for information. I do not know what is in it.

Mr. HENRY. Is that injunction which you have the original injunction which was served?

Mr. GOMPERS. Yes, sir. I will read this entire clause [reading]: "Upon consideration whereof the bill is ordered to be filed and process issued thereon and anyone associated or connected with them, from in any way interfering with the management, operation, or conduct of said mines by their owners or those operating them, either by menaces, threats, or any character of intimidation used to prevent the employees of said mines from going to or from said mines and of working in and about said mines."

Further, they are enjoined from "holding either public or private assemblages upon said property or in anywise molesting, interfering with, or intimidating, the employees of the Fairmount Coal Company so as to induce them to abandon their work in and about said mines. "And the defendants are further restrained from assembling in or near the paths, bridges, and roads opening near said property, leading to or from their homes and residences to the mines, along which the employees of the Fairmount Coal Company are compelled to travel to get to and from their work, either by threats, menaces, or intimidations; and the defendants are further restrained from entering the said mines and interfering with the employees in their mining operations within said mines, or assembling upon said property at or near the entrance to said mines, or from marching near to or in sight of said mines, or either of them, or of the residences of said employees."

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My contention is, that if such acts were committed by workmen or others it is a trespass, and there is a law governing such violation. These injunctions have continued to develop further and further and further, and so far as to include in this injunction the right of assemblage within sight of the mines, within sight of those upon the roads between the mines and the homes of the miners. Now, there is a considerable difference as to sight. With my glasses I can see a considerable distance; without them I can not see as far.

Mr. HENRY. Is that the extreme limit to which the Federal judges have gone in these injunctions-the circumstances which you have cited there?

Mr. GOMPERS. No, sir; they have gone further. They have issued injunctions to restrain men from giving advice to others. They have restrained them from persuading others to do perfectly lawful things. Mr. HENRY. Have you such a writ there?

Mr. GOMPERS. Yes, sir. I have here, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, a number of injunctions, from one of which I will read but a few words:

That the temporary injunction awarded in this case be so enlarged as to inhibit and restrain the defendants from assembling together in camp or otherwise at or near or so near to the mines of the Fairmont Coal Company, or at least so near the residences of its employees, as to disturb, alarm, or intimidate such employees.

In other words, they must not, even upon the public highway, though obtaining permission from the county authorities or from the State authorities, be permitted to camp near the road.

Then, another here, by the United States court of the northern district of West Virginia, in which, among others, men are enjoined who are citizens and residents in the State of West Virginia. Listen to this sentence:

Their confederates, associates, and coconspirators, whose names are to your orator unknown.

That is a dragnet. It includes everybody and anybody. This is an injunction issued by Judge Jackson on June 19, 1902, and made returnable July 15. Men are enjoined from assembling upon said property, at or near the entrance to said mines, or from marching near to or in sight of said mines, or either of them, or of the residences of the employees. In one of these injunctions you will observe, and which, in accordance with the suggestion made by the chairman, I shall be glad to furnish

The CHAIRMAN. Anything you wish to have printed as part of your remarks will go in.

Mr. GOMPERS. In this the men are enjoined from the things that I have enumerated, but they are also enjoined from ridiculing the employees of the company.

The injunction to which I referred a few moments ago was issued in the United States circuit court for the western district of Arkansas, and among the things the men are enjoined from doing is from "congregating at or near or on the premises of the property of the Kansas and Texas Coal Company in, about, or near the town of Huntington, Ark., or elsewhere." No right to assemble any where "for the purpose of intimidating its employees or molesting its employees, or preventing said employees from rendering service to the Kansas and Texas Coal Company; from inducing or coercing by threats, intimidation,

force, or violence, any of said employees to leave the employment of the said Kansas and Texas Coal Company, or from in any manner interfering with or molesting any person or persons who may be employed or seek employment by and of the Kansas and Texas Coal Company in the operation of its coal mines, at or near the said town of Huntington, or elsewhere."

They are further enjoined, "from doing everything whether herein mentioned specifically or omitted."

Anything that is herein enjoined you are not permitted to do, and anything that is not herein specified you shall not do. This was issued by the Hon. James H. Rogers, United States district court, on the 22d day of April, 1899. And permit me, apart from various other features contained in these remarkable injunctions, to mention this fact, that in this injunction it is not even made returnable on any date. Mr. POWERS. Do you think that there is any statute law that justifies an injunction as broad as that?

Mr. GOMPERS. I will answer that by saying that there is not upon the statute books of the Federal Government to-day any authority for the issuance of an injunction of the character of which we complain and which we seek to remedy by this bill.

Mr. HENRY. That is the reason you want it limited?

Mr. GOMPERS. Yes, sir. And I realize, gentlemen, that you are very busy and you may not be able to give me the time I would like to have. But I want to rush over it as fast as I can, and to convey to you that which I have in my mind, rather than make any attempt at oratory or argument; to present to you what I have in my mind and what the working people of America have in their mind regarding this injustice.

Because we are convinced that, if you understood the real merits of our contention, there would be no hesitancy on the part of your committee to do exactly what has been done in former Congresses, report this bill favorably, and to push it to a conclusion before you adjourn. You will observe in these injunctions that they are issued by the court and usually made returnable in three, four, or five weeks after the injunction has been issued. I have one of the injunctions here which shows that it was issued some time during the early part of summer and made returnable in November, and the one to which I have just called your attention is not made returnable at all for any hearing. And before the time expires when these writs are returnable for hearing either one of two things has occurred; either the strike is lost and the injunctions are made permanent, or the strike is won or compromised, and usually one of the conditions of such agreement and settlement between employer and employees is that the legal phase of the question shall be dropped. But what occurs? The record shows that that injunction has been issued and made returnable for a certain day, and when that day comes around and it is not vacated, it is made. permanent by default.

Mr. HENRY. Was that case ever tried on the injunction issued by Judge Rogers?

Mr. GOMPERS. I can not tell you, sir. I do not know.

Mr. LITTLE. I remember of men being put in jail because of it. Mr. GOMPERS. On injunctions in West Virginia a number of men were sentenced to six months; others to a lesser period of imprisonment. And it is not only the imprisonment by reason of the injunc

tion; it is the consciousness on the part of the employers as well as that on the part of the employees that that power exists, and it is held as a menacing weapon over the head of the working people.

We have enough to contend against (in the power that is now possessed by the employers) to maintain our wages and to maintain our hours of labor and our conditions of employment. We have enough to contend against in order to come to some understanding and agreement in the bargaining for the sale of our labor without having the Federal Government and its courts to interpose and throw its great influence against us in the balance.

Between the time of the issuance of the injunction and the time it is made returnable the strike is either lost or won.

I want to call your attention to the fact that the injunctions do not reach rioters; they do not reach lawbreakers, and it is not intended by those that seek them that they shall; nor do they entertain the idea that they can reach them. The injunctions are issued restraining an officer of an organization, and a few others necessarily put in there in order to establish a prima facie case of conspiracy, enjoining the officers from issuing orders as directed by the men themselves, from giving advice for which the officer or officers may have been particularly selected, from giving information that has been gathered by direction of the men, from promulgating the result of a vote in which the men participated.

And let me say, gentlemen, that the officers of an organization of labor who have served any considerable period of time as officers, having the responsibility that comes from defeat, seek by every means within their power to avert and avoid contest and conflict. It is not true, the charge that is so often made against the labor leader, so called, of inciting strikes and contests and conflicts, in order to, as our opponents put it, earn our salaries.

The men who are most successful in the movements of labor, in having the confidence and good will and respect of their fellow-workmen, are the men who have done most to avert and avoid strikes. And I call your attention to the very well-known men in the labor movements of our country for an attestation of that fact and the proof of it. I do not pretend to say that here and there you will not find some crack-brained, irresponsible, and, perhaps, some faithless men; but I ask you to point to any other vocation or profession of life in which you will not find the same character and the same quality of men.

But I am speaking of the labor movement per se and of its growth. And, gentlemen, by the way, let me say that it is not the question with which you and we have to deal, of the movement of labor of this moment, of this hour, of this day, of this year of grace 1904; whether the opponents of labor will it or not, the working people of this country are going to organize more than they are to-day. They may impede the progress, but, as every impediment to any well-directed effort or aspiration of the human family develops greater determination and grit to win and to achieve the object, so it is that every impediment placed in the way of the realization of labor's highest hope will simply strengthen the movement and intensify the feeling. But it is to avoid the intensification of feeling, it is to avoid the bitterness which enters into these contests, when contests occur. Let me say to you, gentlemen, I know that strikes are lost by reason of

the issuance of injunctions; but I want to assure you on my honor as a man that in every strike in which an injunction has been issued the bitterness with which that contest has been fought, the feeling of intense hostility that has been exhibited and manifested or stimulated, has been greater than in any other contest of labor where that element has not been brought into it. The injunction has been taken to mean the interposition of the strong arm of the Government on the side of the man of wealth and power as against the wage-earner, who has nothing but his power to labor and his personality and his bettergrowing conception of his rights and his manhood.

Mr. ALEXANDER. May I interrupt you to ask a question? It is a little foreign to your subject. Would you favor a law favoring compulsory arbitration of all these matters, which, it seems to me, would do away at once

Mr. GOMPERS. No, sir; I should be decidedly opposed to it. I think that the best thing the Government can do in the matters of dispute between employers and employees is to allow them to come to an understanding. I know, of course, that sometimes, here and there, a conflict arises in which the public is inconvenienced, and that is very regrettable-but it is so-but it is better that the public be inconvenienced than that there should be any degree of deterioration of character in the standard of life among the people generally.

I do not know of any great reform that has ever been achieved without somebody being inconvenienced. I would not care to enter into a discussion at this time upon the proposition of compulsory arbitration, because we have gone through that so often elsewhere. But I might say that it is not regarded as a "howling success" where it is applied; and employers and students, as well as the workmen, who have given this subject much thought within the past ten years, and particularly within the past five years, have come practically to a unanimous conclusion that it is not wise, it is not good, it is not practical.

An award against an employer against his will, and the Government interposing for the purpose of its enforcement, would be a practical confiscation of his property. On the other hand, an award against workmen, and they compelled by the State to labor against their will, would be the practical reestablishment of human slavery.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I simply asked the question, Mr. Gompers, to see if you still entertained that opinion. I know that a couple of years ago, when you were here, you answered in the same way. I did not know but that recent developments might possibly have changed your thought on the subject.

Mr. GOMPERS. No.. The action of the President in the case of the miners' strike in the anthracite region, I think we all agree, was a most laudable and timely action. And there is an unwritten law the whole world over that men will take action in matters of administration, men in great responsible position and in a great crisis, assuming to do a thing which is for the great public good; and notwithstanding the carping critics against that action, let me say to you, gentlemen of the committee, that there has never yet been any movement inaugurated anywhere in the whole world that has in so short a time done so much for the material and moral elevation of large numbers of people than has occurred in the improvements of the condition of the miners of the anthracite regions of Pennsylvania. Whereas the miners