SOLD Roosevelt Finds He Must Struggle to Insert Even a Semi-Progressive Plank in the Party Platform

At the turn of the 20th century, injunctions were used and abused as affirmative weapons by both labor and management, though in very unequal proportion. Labor obtained occasional injunctions, mainly to protect the union label from being removed from goods by anti-union sellers. Management regularly sought court interventions to enjoin unions from using their most effective weapons of industrial warfare (strikes, picketing, and boycotts), and to imprison labor leaders. As examples, in the case of a strike by steelworkers in Cleveland, a judge issued an injunction against picketing; and in another, the AFL placed the Bucks Stove and Range Co. on its "We Don’t Patronize" list. The company asked for an injunction against the boycott and received one that was made permanent on March 23, 1908. With the 1908 presidential election coming up, labor leaders made injunctions an issue.

President Roosevelt was not generally sympathetic to organized labor, but in the State of the Union message he would deliver on December 8, 1908, indicated that he was opposed to the use of injunctions to harm workers. “There are certain decisions by various courts which have been exceedingly detrimental to the rights of wageworkers…There is also, I think, ground for the belief that substantial injustice is often suffered by employees in consequence of the custom of courts issuing temporary injunctions without notice to them, and punishing them for contempt of court in instances where…they have no knowledge of any proceedings….Organized labor is chafing under the unjust restraint which comes from repeated resort to this plan of procedure…The power of injunction is a great equitable remedy, which should on no account be destroyed. But safeguards should be erected against its abuse…”

The 1908 Republican Convention was held in Chicago from 16 June to 19 June. It was a foregone conclusion that the party’s presidential candidate would be William H. Taft, who had sat on the bench before entering the national scene and was considered by labor leaders and others as an “injunction judge,” quick to prevent effective labor

action. They were concerned about the issue and Taft’s position, and brought these concerns to Roosevelt. Here, during the convention, he acknowledges that he is fighting to get even a water-downed (or more “moderate”) plank on injunctions adopted by the Taft-oriented platform committee.

Typed Letter Signed on White House letterhead, Washington, June 18, 1908 (during the convention), to Wall Street attorney and former judge Reuben D. Silliman, who had written him with some thoughts on injunctions. “I am in receipt of your letter of the 17th instant. I agree with you. I have been doing my best to have a moderate injunction plank put into the platform for the very reasons you give. I liked your letter so much that I have shown it to Taft.”

Silliman’s letter to Roosevelt has been lost, so we cannot determine his specific suggestion. We can, however, see that the Taft-supported 1908 Republican platform ended up more conservative than Roosevelt and other progressive Republicans would have liked. It avoided the larger question of the use of injunctions to strangle labor and limited itself to the issue of notice, providing “that the rules of procedure in the Federal Courts with respect to the issuance of the writ of injunction should be more accurately defined by statute, and that no injunction or temporary restraining order should be issued without notice, except where irreparable injury would result from delay, in which case a speedy hearing thereafter should be granted.” Considering that Roosevelt, while yet in office, was already having to prevail on Taft to accept planks that could hardly be deemed progressive, it is not surprising that the two men would soon have a parting of the ways. President Woodrow Wilson would be the one to resolve the issue. He prevailed on Congress in 1914 to pass the Clayton Act, which prohibited, in most instances, the use of the injunction in labor disputes, and expressed the principle that strikes, peaceful picketing, and boycotts do not violate federal laws.