The judge, George C. Barrett, in his charge to the jury, conceded that striking, picketing, and boycotting as such were not prohibited by law, if not accompanied by force, threats, or intimidation.  But in the case under consideration the action of the pickets in advising passers-by not to patronize the establishment and in distributing boycott circulars constituted intimidation.  Also, since the $1000 fine was obtained by fear induced by a threat to continue the unlawful injury to Theiss inflicted by the “boycott,” the case was one of extortion covered by the penal code.  It made no difference whether the money was appropriated by the defendants for personal use or whether it was turned over to their organization.  The jury, which reflected the current public opinion against boycotts, found all of the five defendants guilty of extortion, and Judge Barrett sentenced them to prison for terms ranging from one year and six months to three years and eight months.

The Theiss case, coming as it did at a time of general restlessness of labor and closely after the defeat of the eight-hour movement, greatly hastened the growth of the sentiment for an independent labor party.  The New York Central Labor Union, the most famous and most influential organization of its kind in the country at the time, with a membership estimated at between 40,000 and 50,000, placed itself at the head of the movement in which both socialists and non-socialists joined.  Henry George, the originator of the single tax movement, was nominated by the labor party for Mayor of New York and was allowed to draw up his own platform, which he made of course a simon-pure single tax platform.  The labor demands were compressed into one plank.  They were as follows:  The reform of court procedure so that “the practice of drawing grand jurors from one class should cease, and the requirements of a property qualification for trial jurors should be abolished”; the stopping of the “officious intermeddling of the police with peaceful assemblages”; the enforcement of the laws for safety and the sanitary inspection of buildings; the abolition of contract labor on public work; and equal pay for equal work without distinction of sex on such work.

The George campaign was more in the nature of a religious revival than of a political election campaign.  It was also a culminating point in the great labor upheaval.  The enthusiasm of the laboring people reached its highest pitch.  They felt that, baffled and defeated as they were in their economic struggle, they were now nearing victory in the struggle for the control of government.  Mass meetings were numerous and large.  Most of them were held in the open air, usually on the street corners.  From the system by which one speaker followed another, speaking at several meeting places in a night, the labor campaign got its nickname of the “tailboard campaign.”  The common people, women and men, gathered in hundreds and often thousands around