At this time also were passed
the first laws to promote voluntary arbitration and most of the laws
which allowed unions to incorporate. Only in New York and Maryland were
the conspiracy laws repealed. Four States enacted such laws and many
States passed laws against intimidation. Statutes, however, played at
that time, as they do now, but a secondary role. The only statute which
proved of much importance was the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. When Congress
passed this act in 1890, few people thought it had application to labor
unions. In 1893-1894, as we shall see, however, this act was
successfully invoked in several labor controversies, notably in the Debs
case.
The bitterness of the industrial struggle during the eighties made it
inevitable that the labor movement should acquire an extensive police
and court record. It was during that decade that charges like "inciting
to riot," "obstructing the streets," "intimidation," and "trespass" were
first extensively used in connection with labor disputes. Convictions
were frequent and penalties often severe. What attitude the courts at
that time took toward labor violence was shown most strikingly, even if
in too extreme a form to be entirely typical, in the case of the Chicago
anarchists.
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