In 1850 the boycott again appeared in New York City in connection with the labor movement that resulted in the organization of many of the workingmen in that city. Conspicuous in this movement to organize the laborers of New York were the tailors, who in March, 1850, formed the Journeymen Tailors' Union. In the summer of that year a central association called the Industrial Congress and composed of representatives of the unions was established. At a session of this Congress on July 30 a resolution was adopted boycotting the clothing firms that were antagonistic to the Tailors' Union. The resolution, which was introduced by the masons, provided that, "as tailors of New York are on strike for wages, we the Industrial Congress will not patronize any store or shop that does not pay the proper prices to their workmen, and that we report the same to our respective societies. Be it further resolved that the tailors be requested to publish the names and numbers of such as do not pay the prices demanded."

9919

These comparatively early instances of the boycott are of small importance in the American Labor movement. Imposed sporadically when organization succeeded in getting a foothold in different parts of the country and discarded when it collapsed, the boycott did not become an effective and important weapon of labor unions until 1880. But from that year to the present time, first under the Knights of Labor and then under the American Federation of Labor, it has had an almost continuous history of successful employment as an acknowledged and a universal method of trade-union pressure.

Almost without warning the boycott suddenly emerged in 1880 to become for the next ten or fifteen years the most effective weapon of unionism. There was no object so mean and no person so exalted as to escape its power. Side by side, with equal prominence, the Knights of Labor boycotted clothing manufacturers and their draymen, insignifi

19 G. A. Stevens, pp. 1–3, 10, II.

cant country grocers and presidential candidates, insipid periodicals and the currency of a nation, our national banknotes.20 Although no statement can be found to the effect that it was the policy of the Order to employ the boycott as its principal means of aggression, and although the resolution providing that the Order “adopt a general system of boycotting instead of strikes" was rejected by the convention of 1884, there can be little doubt that in actual practice the Knights of Labor were primarily a boycotting organization. Disregarding even the numerous instances of actual boycotts, the very tone of their articles and their attitude of threatened withdrawal of support or patronage from almost all of their opponents attests the existence of a definite boycotting policy to which all other resources were subsidiary.

The spectacular appearance at this time of the boycott and its subsequent popularity may be ascribed to the influence of several factors. Its "sudden emergence in 1880 as an important means of enforcing the demands of the unions upon recalcitrant employers" was primarily "due to the solidarity given the trade union movement by the growth of the Knights of Labor." Furthermore, it was perhaps true of the period immediately before and after 1880 that trade-union sentiments had not as yet been disseminated to a marked extent and that the organization of labor had to be carried on for the most part among workmen who, like many of the present-day immigrant laborers, had not yet learned the desirability of continuous membership in labor organizations. To the large numbers of unskilled workmen who were now for the first time experiencing the advantages and disadvantages of organization, the monthly or weekly payment of dues, through which alone could be built up the war funds indispensable for the effective management of strikes, was at once new and dis

20 Address of the Grand Master Workman to the Nineteenth Regular Session of the General Assembly of the Knights of Labor, 1895, pp. 4, 104.

21 Barnett, The Printers, p. 269.

tasteful. With funds insufficient for the universal payment of strike benefits and inadequate to provide the expenses of transporting scabs from the seat of strikes to places where there were no conflicts in progress, it is small wonder that the boycott was often invoked to supplement the unsuccessful strike. In addition to these internal factors favorable to the use of the boycott, it had become easier, because of the growing concentration of population in cities and the increasing division of labor, to replace strikers with non-union workmen, thus again rendering more unfavorable the chances for successful strikes.22 Appearing, therefore, in 1879 and 1880 as a compact labor organization, composed in the main of workmen ignorant of the difficulties and necessities of organization; not oversupplied with funds; finding it necessary to employ spectacular and effective, but cheap, methods of aggression; controlling, however, a not insignificant purchasing power, the Knights of Labor immediately seized in 1880 upon the boycott as a unique and logical source of strength.

Boycotting under the Knights of Labor falls roughly into three periods. The first period from the beginning to 1885 was one of indiscriminate, unregulated, local boycotting. The second from 1885 to about 1892 was characterized by the central control and careful execution of the boycott; and the third period was marked by the extension of the boycott, still under a central but much weakened control, to new fields of industrial warfare.

(1) Members of labor organizations generally hold that it is an individual's right to use his patronage as he sees fit; it follows, they contend, that any number of individuals may collectively agree to withdraw their patronage from hostile firms. The right to withdraw patronage and to request others to withdraw it is, therefore, a species of inalienable right which workingmen are exceedingly reluctant to relinquish to the control of a distant central office.

22 v. Waltershausen, Die Nordamerikanischen Gewerkschaften, p. 241.

Such was apparently the prevailing opinion in the rank and file of the Order in the first few years of its history. Accordingly, practically all boycotts emanated from the local and district assemblies, while their enforcement and regulation were left in the same hands. There was, to be sure, the general provision adopted in 1882 that "no firm or individual employer shall be subject to general boycotting without the consent of the majority of the executive board." The general terms of this provision, however; its failure to define general boycotting, and the fact that the members of the Order did not yet fully comprehend the desirability of a restricted and regulated system of boycott, rendered this provision valueless. Local and district assemblies boycotted when they pleased and what they pleased; firms fair to one local assembly would be boycotted by a neighboring assembly.

Such a situation elicited from the grand master workman before the assembly of 1885 the recommendation that, inasmuch as the general assembly had not heretofore enacted adequate legislation for the regulation of boycotting throughout the Order, "the power to decide upon the wisdom of embarking in a boycotting crusade should be placed in the hands of the Executive Board." This recommendation met with considerable opposition on the part of the local assemblies. To them the organization on the spot was most competent to judge when and where a boycott should be levied. Accordingly, the proposed amendment to the constitution providing that "only the Executive Board have the power to issue a boycott" was rejected. Nevertheless, this period of unrestrained local boycotting was brought to a close by the adoption at the same convention of two rules: one granting local, district, and state assemblies the right to initiate boycotts that did not effect other localities; the second providing that whenever any local or district assembly desired to initiate a boycott that might affect other localities, "the facts must be gathered and presented to the Executive Board which after a careful examination shall have the power to institute a general boycott."

(2) In 1885, then, the Knights of Labor entered upon a period of boycotting characterized by the subordination of local to national authorities in the matter of control. The first boycott emanating directly from the general executive board and operating throughout the Order was in that year imposed upon the Dueber Company, a large watchcase manufactory of Newport, Kentucky.23 With such vigor and persistency was this boycott waged that all doubts that may have previously existed as to the desirability of a system of centrally imposed boycotting were at once dispelled. Indeed, so systematically were future general boycotts operated that the casual correspondence of the previous period was succeeded by such a stream of letters and instructions that the governmental mechanism of the Order was extended in 1887 by the establishment of a "Boycotting Department."

In this period, too, were perfected the details involved in the announcement of boycotts, in the tracing of boycotted goods, and in the local enforcement of the boycott, matters in which the Knights attained a degree of skill that has not since been surpassed. The articles published in their journals advising members that hostilities with certain firms had been begun and that a boycott upon their products was in order were masterpieces of that form of persuasive composition; facts concerning the sources and destinations of unfair commodities were often printed in the journal with the most minute details. Nor was this condition of central control, with its ability to concentrate the forces of the Order upon single firms and its greater efficiency in management, without its fruits. On the capitulation of the Liggett and Meyers Tobacco Company in June, 1893, following a six years' boycott, the editor of the journal asserted that "up to date the Knights of Labor had never lost a boycott; and powerful and wealthy as an enemy may be, it is only a question of time when the end must come either in bankruptcy or surrender," a judgment which, while

28 Proceedings, 1885, p. 78.

24 Journal of the Knights of Labor, June 8, 1893, p. 1.