a State accident insurance for coal-miners.  California and Montana exempted labor in a large degree from the operation of the State anti-trust laws; but Washington adopted a new statute defining a conspiracy to exist when two or more persons interfere or threaten to interfere with the trade, tools, or property of another, and proof of an overt act is not necessary.  North and South Carolina, Texas, and Connecticut passed the usual statute protecting employees from being discharged because of membership in a trades-union, which, as we have said, has been held unconstitutional wherever contested.  Arizona, California, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming and Nevada enacted or amended eight-hour measures for employees in mines, but little was accomplished for children in the Southern States.[1]

[Footnote 1:  See “Progressive Tendencies in the Labor Legislation of 1909,” by Irene Osgood, in the American Political Science Review for May, 1910.]

The labor-injunction question has been recently covered by an admirable study prepared by the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics and published in December, 1909.  The investigation covers eleven years, from 1898 to 1908, in which there occurred two thousand and two strikes.  In sixty-six of these strikes the employers sought injunctions and in forty-six cases injunctions were actually issued.  In only nine cases were there proceedings for contempt of these injunctions, while only in two cases out of the two thousand were there any convictions for contempt of court.  In eighteen cases injunctions were sought to prevent employees from striking, but only in four of these were they granted, and one of these was later dissolved.  Seven bills were brought by employees against unions for interference with their employment, etc., and in three cases unions sought injunctions against other unions.  In one case a union brought a bill against an employer and in one case an employer sought an injunction against an employers’ association.  Under a decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court it was declared unlawful for a trade-union to impose fines upon those of its members who refused to obey its orders to strike or engage in a boycott.  In 1909 a bill was introduced in the Legislature with the special object of permitting this, but it failed of passage.  The Bulletin contains a brief history of equity jurisdiction in labor cases and reprints all the decisions of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts down to the year 1909, and the actual injunctions issued by Superior Courts in five late cases, with a chronological summary of proceedings in cases concerning industrial disputes in all Massachusetts courts for the eleven years covered by the report.