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They predicted that one step would inevitably lead to another, that from a policy of bartering with the old parties for anti-injunction planks in their platforms, labor would turn to a political party of its own.
In 1900 only eight votes were recorded in the House against a bill exempting labor unions from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act; it failed, however, of passage in the Senate. In 1902 an anti-injunction bill championed by the American Federation of Labor passed the House of Representatives. That was the last time, however, for many years to come when such a bill was even reported out of committee.
Legislation will undoubtedly play even a bigger part than it has done in the protection of the workers. Almost all laws for which organized labor generally works affect women as well as men, whether they are anti-injunction statutes, or workmen's compensation acts, or factory laws.
The wording of the proposed anti-injunction plank suggests that it had been framed after consultation with the Democratic leaders, since it omitted to demand the sweeping away of the doctrine of malicious conspiracy or the prohibition of the issuance of injunctions to protect business rights, which had regularly been asked by the American Federation of Labor since 1904.
Still better proof of the slight influence of the Federation upon government is furnished by the vicissitudes of its anti-injunction bills in Congress. The Federation had been awakened to the seriousness of the matter of the injunction by the Debs case. A bill of its sponsoring providing for jury trials in "indirect" contempt cases passed the Senate in 1896 only to be killed in the House.
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