Morning journal and courier., 1886-05-03
The Doom of the Boycott.

In dismissing the grand jury which pre- sented the practice of boycotting as a crime,
 Recorder Smyth very properly took occasion 1 to thank its members for the patience with which they had investigated the subject and for the wholesome declaration they had l made with regard to it. In fact, the boycott l is device for disorganizing society and an- nulling the results of civilization, which needs only to be understood in order to be sup pressed summarly. The people who l live by honest industry are in great major 1 ity over those who live by blackmail or | by any other form of crime. If they were not society could not subsist at all. The boycott is device to make the people who live by honest industry pay tribute to those who do not. Industry can no more be se- cure in a country in which boycotting is rec ognized as legitimate weapon in trade con tests than it can in country where the prac l tioe of capturing travellers and holding them for ransom is regarded reputable method of getting a living.
 Fortunately the boycotters themselves have, in the recent, instances of boycotting in this country, Shown what they meant by it so clearly that nobody can any longer be under any mistake about their purpose. They begin by taking it upon themselves as one party to controversy to adjudicate the questions in dispute. This proceeding is it. self as repugnant to natural justice as it is to positive law. After they have decided that they are in the right and the other party in the wrong they proceed to enforce their own decision by putting the other party under ban which, if their power were equal 10 their malice, would result in his starva- tion through the refusal of everybody to have anything to do with him. even to the extent ! of supplying him, for pay, with the neees- saries of life. This was actually attempting in St. Louis, when the butcher who served MT. Hoxie was warned to deslst from selling him meat under penalty of suffering in his own person the same pains and penalties the boycotters had de- nounced against MT. Hoxie. If these meas | ures are so effective that the boycottee sub
 mi:s and expresses a willingness to aceede to 1 the terms of the boyeotters, he is not allow l ed to do 50. That is to say, in addition to 1 doing what was originally demanded of him
 hs is required to pay to his prosecutors ran som, under the description of the expenses of the boycott, before he is permitted to resume l his lawful business without molestation. If this ransom can be collected it is plain
 that the persons who have the power of col ! lecting it will not be satisfied with one ap plication. Like other blackmailers they will demand more and mors until the victim is | drained of all that he can be made to yield. l It is to be borne in mind that the profes- sional workingnen, so to speak, the agita tors, rule by no means the most capable WorKmen or the most ValuaDle nu- man beings engaged in their respective l trades. They are for the most part very much alive to the desirableness of getting
 the most money for the least work, and to those of them who are ready of speech the 1 Organization of labor' opens much more attractive field than labor itself Pre.exts | for disputes are never wanting in a world where no creature is satisfied with it's lot. l If, whenever one of these disputes arises the employer can, by means of the boycott, be seized and held for ransom, the professional workingmen who organize the boycott will make a much more ample livelihood at much | less trouble than if they continue to work quietly at their trades. From their point of view the boycott leaves nothing to be de- sired.
 Built is plain enough that the boycott, ! with the supplementary device of levying a l blacknail the amount of which is fixed by
 the boycotters, for "the expenses of the boy 1 cott," would render the regular operations of | business so preearious that, if the system | in them. Industry, trade, civilization itself, | would be as preearious in the United States
 l as they were in medieval Europe or as they
 | now are in Macedonia. It would be a
 monstrous thing if there were no law
 | to prevent the predatory operations
 of these boycotting banditti, as 8 po-
 lice justice advised police captain that there
 | was not, and as the same magistrate practi-
 cally taught by discharging persons brought
 1 before him on the charge of interference
 1 with the business of others By indictine
 individual boycotters and by making gen
 eral presentment on the subject of boycott
 ting the grand jury has effeetually disabused
 the minds of agitators of the delusion that