LABOR LEADERS PUNISHED

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 17 June 1913, Page 2

LABOR LEADERS PUNISHED

Samuel Gompers. president of the American Federation of Labor, and the '^"st-known union leader in the United States, .was sentenced last week to serv< thirty elay,s in gael for contempt of Court, in advising unionists to violate an injunction; while John Mitchell and Frank Morrison, vice-president and secretary respectively of the same organisation, were, each fined £100 for participation in the offence (says the San Francisoo correspondent .of the Post, writing on May 11). This is the same matter in which the three .jnt^i mentioned were in -910 sentenced ' to .'."'terms ranging from a year in the case of Gompers down to six months. r Those' sentences, were "reversed- on appeal; and oh., a' new trial, the lesser punishments.inflicted. The; final decision now rendered is by the. Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia. The contempt was. committed in the following Avay: A controversy arising between union labor and the Buck Stove and Range Company, a boycott was declared. The Federal Court issued an injunction forbidding the boycotting of the company's goods. in defiance of the injunction, Gompers and the other defendants, through the official publication of the American Federation of Labor, continued to urge all sympathisers with trades unionism to refrain from purchasing articles made by the Buck Company.