They returned to work the next morning and all were permitted to take their accustomed places except those who had given the signal.They were discharged.At five o'clock that afternoon the men put aside their work, and the following morning reappeared.
Again the men who had given the signal were discharged, and the rest went to work.The union then sent notice to the foreman that the discharged men must be reinstated or that all would quit.Astrike ensued which soon led to a boycott of national proportions.It spread from the local to the St.Louis Central Trades and Labor Union and to the Metal Polishers' Union.In 1907the executive council of the American Federation of Labor officially placed the Buck's Stove and Range Company on the unfair list and gave this action wide and conspicuous circulation in The Federationist.This boycott received further impetus from the action of the Mine Workers, who in their Annual Convention resolved that the Buck's Stove and Range Company be put on the unfair list and that "any member of the United Mine Workers of America purchasing a stove of above make be fined $5.00 and failing to pay the same be expelled from the organization."Espionage became so efficient and letters from old customers withdrawing patronage became so numerous and came from so wide a range of territory that the company found itself rapidly nearing ruin.An injunction was secured, enjoining the American Federation from blacklisting the company.The labor journals circumvented this mandate by publishing in display type the statement that "It is unlawful for the American Federation of Labor to boycott Buck's Stoves and Ranges," and then in small type adroitly recited the news of the court's decision in such a way that the reader would see at a glance that the company was under union ban.These evasions of the court's order were interpreted as contempt, and in punishment the officers of the Federation were sentenced to imprisonment: Frank Morrison for six months, John Mitchell for nine months, Samuel Gompers for twelve months.But a technicality intervened between the leaders and the cells awaiting them.The public throughout the country had followed the course of this case with mingled feelings of sympathy and disfavor, and though the boycott had never met with popular approval, on the whole the public was relieved to learn that the jail-sentences were not to be served.
The Danbury Hatters' boycott was brought on in 1903 by the attempt of the Hatters' Union to make a closed shop of a manufacturing concern in Danbury, Connecticut.The unions moved upon Danbury, flushed with two recent victories--one in Philadelphia, where an important hat factory had agreed to the closed shop after spending some $40,000 in fighting, and another at Orange, New Jersey, where a manufacturer had spent $25,000.
But as the Danbury concern was determined to fight the union, in 1902 a nationwide boycott was declared.The company then brought suit against members of the union in the United States District Court.Injunction proceedings reached the Supreme Court of the United States on a demurrer, and in February, 1908, the court declared that the Sherman Anti-Trust Law forbade interstate boycotts.The case then returned to the original court for trial.
