In the meantime the American Federation, which had
financed the litigation, undertook to raise the needed sum by
voluntary collection and made Gompers's birthday the occasion for
a gift to the Danbury local. The Federation insisted that the
houses be sold on foreclosure and that the collected money be
used not as a prior settlement but as an indemnity to the
individuals thus deprived of their homes. Rancor gave way to
reason, however, and just before the day fixed for the
foreclosure sale the matter was settled. In all, $235,000 was
paid in damages by the union to the company. In the fourteen
years during which this contest was waged, about forty
defendants, one of the plaintiffs, and eight judges who had
passed on the controversy, died. The outcome served as a spur to
the Federation in hastening through Congress the Clayton bill of
1914, designed to place labor unions beyond the reach of the
anti-trust laws.
The union label has in more recent years achieved importance as a
weapon in union warfare. This is a mark or device denoting a
union-made article. It might be termed a sort of labor union
trademark. Union men are admonished to favor the goods so marked,
but it was not until national organizations were highly perfected
that the label could become of much practical value. It is a
device of American invention and was first used by the cigar
makers in 1874. In 1880 their national body adopted the now
familiar blue label and, with great skill and perseverance and at
a considerable outlay of money, has pushed its union-made ware,
in the face of sweat-shop competition, of the introduction of
cigar making machinery, and of fraudulent imitation.
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