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an important and desirable end, will under no circumstances approve "protection of the voluntaries" beyond the proper scope of general criminal law.
We have thus in general expressed our judgment of the bill. It would be very desirable to go farther and by more precise legal and economic criticism of special provisions to justify and elaborate this general judgment. That would, however, far exceed the capacity of the space at our present disposal, and would not perhaps have the same interest for foreigners which it has for us who are in the thick of the fray. It therefore remains merely to explain the spirit of the bill in certain cardinal points, and to confirm what has already been said by a few examples.
Technically the proposed law is offered as an amendment to sec. 153 of the industrial laws of the empire. This section makes it a punishable offense to attempt by means of physical constraint, threats, insults, or ban {Verrufscrkldning) to induce others to take part in agreements for the purpose of getting bet- ter wages and labor conditions, or to prevent others from with- drawing from such agreements. Accordingly, if a laborer does not employ one of these four means, if he merely explains to his working associates the situation, he is not liable, according to the law as it now stands; and if he employs those illegal means, unless he is at the same time guilty of a crime which according to general criminal law is liable to a severer penalty, he can at most only be subjected to three months' imprisonment.
This paragraph itself, however, contains a special law for striking laborers, inasmuch as it punishes more severely crimes which laborers commit during a strike than the same crimes committed by other people. This appears most clearly in the case of the "ban." This is otherwise not punishable. Every union can expel one of its members, and at the same time pro- hibit the others from further intercourse with him, without any further attention to the matter on the part of others. Every association of traders can agree to deliver no more goods to a given merchant (among the booksellers, for example, there is a ring which maintains itself only by such ban). Every officer who is guilty of conduct unbecoming the honor of his class may
