The First American Labor Case

Abstract

THE yeast which was to raise the labor injunction was working vigorously in 1877.1 But some of its earlier ferments are also informing to the student of the subsequent product. Before 1877 there had not, in this country, been many instances of resort to the courts in labor troubles.2 To contemporary observation they may have seemed to affect the lives and fortunes of employers and workmen only locally and for brief periods. But their existence as history has had effect upon modern law. The chemistry of the forces which pressed upon the courts in labor cases-- hopes, desires, values, emotions, opinions, beliefs-was, moreover, as it is to-day. The law of social physics which explains or describes judicial response and resistance to such forces-a law which, though clearly perceivable, eludes satisfactory formulation -- was also the same then as still. And the facts and questions were substantially similar to those of which our view, when we look at them in contemporary labor cases, is confused by a clutter of adjudications.