An injunction was secured, enjoining the American
Federation from blacklisting the company. The labor journals
circumvented this mandate by publishing in display type the
statement that "It is unlawful for the American Federation of
Labor to boycott Buck's Stoves and Ranges," and then in small
type adroitly recited the news of the court's decision in such a
way that the reader would see at a glance that the company was
under union ban. These evasions of the court's order were
interpreted as contempt, and in punishment the officers of the
Federation were sentenced to imprisonment: Frank Morrison for six
months, John Mitchell for nine months, Samuel Gompers for twelve
months. But a technicality intervened between the leaders and the
cells awaiting them. The public throughout the country had
followed the course of this case with mingled feelings of
sympathy and disfavor, and though the boycott had never met with
popular approval, on the whole the public was relieved to learn
that the jail-sentences were not to be served.
The Danbury Hatters' boycott was brought on in 1903 by the
attempt of the Hatters' Union to make a closed shop of a
manufacturing concern in Danbury, Connecticut. The unions moved
upon Danbury, flushed with two recent victories--one in
Philadelphia, where an important hat factory had agreed to the
closed shop after spending some $40,000 in fighting, and another
at Orange, New Jersey, where a manufacturer had spent $25,000.
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