Sword's Other Edge

Organized Labor was not so vociferous against the appointment of Charles Evans Hughes to the Supreme Court as it was against John Johnston Parker (TIME, May 12). But those who did cry out against Mr. Hughes said they feared him as a prime representative of Vested Property, old antagonist of Labor. Notable, therefore, was a Supreme Court decision last week, written by Chief Justice Hughes and unanimously approved by his liberal as well as his conservative colleagues, in which one of Vested Property's greatest swords was shown to have two edges, to cut two ways. Chief Justice Hughes explained how Federal court injunctions, often wielded by employers to cripple labor unions, might be available to labor unions to defend themselves against their employers.

The Case. In 1926 Congress passed the Railway Labor Act setting up the U. S. Board of Mediation to settle disputes between carriers and brotherhoods, and providing that each side should be free to designate its agents by "collective action, without interference, influence or coercion by either party over the self-organization of the other." In 1927 a wage dispute arose between the Texas & New Orleans R. R. (a Southern Pacific subsidiary) and the Brotherhood of Railway & Steamship Clerks. When the Brotherhood began to choose its representatives to appear before the Board of Mediation, the railroad organized a company union, attempted to inveigle Brotherhood men into it. On the ground that the railroad would by this means control both sides of the wage argument before the Board of Mediation, the Brotherhood asked U. S. District Judge Joseph Chappell Hutcheson Jr. of Texas for an order restraining the company from interfering with the Brotherhood's organization. It was charged that 1,700 Brothers had been intimidated into joining the company's union.

In February 1928 Judge Hutcheson issued one of the very few injunctions on the side of Labor. He ordered the railroad to dissolve its company union and leave the Brotherhood alone. S. P. attorneys hastened to the Supreme Court with an appeal, claiming the Railway Labor Act was unconstitutional because it deprived their clients of "property rights" (i. e. selection of employes) without due process of law.

The Decision. Chief Justice Hughes, upholding the constitutionality of the Railway Labor Act, found Labor's injunction a proper means of keeping the railroad from violating the law. Said he: "The legality of collective action on the part of employes in order to safeguard their proper interests is not to be disputed. . . . Such collective action would be a mockery if representation were made futile by interferences with freedom of choice. . . ."

Meanwhile at Houston the Brotherhood had on file in the U. S. court a petition that Henry Morris Lull, executive vice president of the road, George Stewart Waid, general manager, and John Givens Torain, assistant to Mr. Waid, had violated the provisions of the injunction and therefore should be sent to jail until they purged themselves of contempt. The Brotherhood alleged these S. P. officials had failed to dissolve the company union and to cease interference with brotherhood affairs, as Judge Hutcheson had ordered. Filed last February, this petition, by joint agreement, was held in abeyance until the Supreme Court should rule on the validity of the injunction. Fortified by last week's decision the Brotherhood pressed to punish its employers as insistently as any employer would seek to penalize a brotherhood that disobeyed a court's order.

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