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Article: Clayton Act, Labor Provisions
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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CLAYTON ACT, LABOR PROVISIONS
CLAYTON ACT, LABOR PROVISIONS.
By the turn of the twentieth century, the national leadership of the American labor movement had abandoned politics in favor of "pure and simple trade unionism." But the federal courts, wielding the nation's antitrust law, soon drove labor back into national politics. The injunction against the Pullman Railway boycott, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in
In Re Debs
(1895), was followed by a series of judicial decrees that used the Sherman Antitrust Act to outlaw strikes and boycotts. Equally ominous were damage suits such as the Danbury Hatters' Case (1908), making trade unionists liable for treble damages for losses ...