The industrial upheaval in the middle of the eighties had, like the
great strike of 1877, a political reverberation. Although the latter was
heard throughout the entire country, it centered in the city of New
York, where the situation was complicated by court interference in the
labor struggle.
A local assembly of the Knights of Labor had declared a boycott against
one George Theiss, a proprietor of a music and beer garden. The latter
at first submitted and paid a fine of $1000 to the labor organization,
but later brought action in court against the officers charging them
with intimidation and extortion.
The judge, George C. Barrett, in his charge to the jury, conceded that
striking, picketing, and boycotting as such were not prohibited by law,
if not accompanied by force, threats, or intimidation. But in the case
under consideration the action of the pickets in advising passers-by not
to patronize the establishment and in distributing boycott circulars
constituted intimidation. Also, since the $1000 fine was obtained by
fear induced by a threat to continue the unlawful injury to Theiss
inflicted by the "boycott," the case was one of extortion covered by the
penal code.
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