Leading customers withdraw their patronage at the union's threat.
The alert picket is the harbinger of ruin, and the union black
list is as fraught with threat as the black hand.
* In 1880, Lord Erne, an absentee Irish landlord, sent Captain
Boycott to Connemara to subdue his irate tenants. The people of
the region refused to have any intercourse whatever with the
agent or his family. And social and business ostracism has since
been known as the boycott.
The New York Bureau of Statistics of Labor has shown that during
the period of eight years between 1885 and 1892 there were 1352
boycotts in New York State alone. A sort of terrorism spread
among the tradespeople of the cities. But the unions went too
far. Instances of gross unfairness aroused public sympathy
against the boycotters. In New York City, for instance, a Mrs.
Grey operated a small bakery with nonunion help. Upon her refusal
to unionize her shop at the command of the walking delegate, her
customers were sent the usual boycott notice, and pickets were
posted. Her delivery wagons were followed, and her customers were
threatened. Grocers selling her bread were systematically
boycotted. All this persecution merely aroused public sympathy
for Mrs. Grey, and she found her bread becoming immensely
popular. The boycotters then demanded $2500 for paying their
boycott expenses. When news of this attempt at extortion was made
public, it heightened the tide of sympathy, the courts took up
the matter, and the boycott failed.
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