448
The Green Bag
tempt in wrongfully inciting employees of the railroad managed by the receiver to quit the service, and to enjoin the continuance of such acts, it was said by Judge Taft that officers of a union duly vested with authority to call strikes may order members, "on pain of expul sion from their union, peaceably to leave the service of their employer, because any of the terms of their em ployment are unsatisfactory." Inas much as this proceeding is not a controversy between a union and its members, but between an employer of labor and a union represented by its officers, it is a legitimate inference that the language used by Judge Taft was intended to apply to the latter species of controversy and was not intended to be limited to controversies between a union and its members where no rights of third parties were involved. In Wabash R. Co. v. Hannahan,17 the court refused to grant an injunction on a bill filed by a railroad company to prohibit officers of a union from calling a strike and "compelling" its members in complainant's employ to quit the service, it appearing that the strike was for the purpose of obtaining better terms of employment. In this case it was urged that the acts of the officers were "subversive alike of the funda mental rights of the employer to man age his own business and of the em ployees to bestow their labor as they will." In answering this contention, the Court declared itself entirely in accord with the views of Judge Taft, (quoted in a preceding passage of this article), and in addition used the following language in disposing thereof: "This kind of argument enters deeply into the domain of political science, and might well be addressed to a body of "121 Fed. 563, 568, 571.
constructive statesmen or men originally contemplating a labor organization. It is an argument that would be pertinent against the organization of society into government. [The italics are ours.] The will of the individual must consent to yield to the will of the majority, or no organization either of society into government, capital into combination, or labor into coalition can ever be effected. The individual must yield in order that the many may receive a greater benefit. The right of labor to organize for lawful purposes and by organic agreement to subject the indi vidual members to rules, regulations, and conduct prescribed by the majority is no longer an open question in the jurisprudence of this country." In Bohn Mfg. Co. v. Hollis,1* it was held that an agreement between members of a retail lumber dealers' association not to deal with any wholesale dealer who sells directly to customers not dealers, at a point where a member of the association is doing business, and containing provisions for notification to all members when the wholesale dealer makes such sale and for the expulsion of members who deal with him, is not unlawful, and such wholesale dealer cannot enjoin the sending out of such notices. The infliction of the penalty of expulsion, it was said, is not coercion. "It was wholly a matter of their own free choice whether they pre ferred to trade with plaintiff or the association." In Mogul Steamship Co. v. McGregor,19 it was held that a com bination of ship-owners, entered into for the purpose of securing all the freight shipped at certain ports, might, among other means to make the com bination effective, prohibit their agents, 1954 Minn. 2. 55 N. W. 1119, 21 L. R. A 337. 40 Am. St. Rep. 119. "23 Q. B. D. . W (affirmed in 1902, A. C. 25. 66 L. T. 1, 40 W. 1337).
