The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 was an effort to clarify the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and protect labor unions from antitrust rulings. The need to change the Sherman Act grew more apparent between 1896 and 1914 as labor unions faced a barrage of antitrust actions. When workers from many different industries joined labor unions in increasing numbers after 1900, the chief beneficiary proved to be the conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL). Led by Samuel Gompers, the AFL focused its efforts on organizing skilled, white male workers. While some business leaders, such as those in the National Civic Federation, viewed the AFL as a safe alternative to more radical unions like the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the majority of corporations resisted all organizing efforts. The courts proved to be their first line of defense.
Between the 1890s and 1914, corporations, judges, and politicians opposed to unionization used the Sherman Antitrust Act to break strikes either through intimidation or injunctions against strikes and boycotts. The Sherman Act originally was enacted to prevent monopolies, ensure competition, and check the growing power of corporations. In actual practice, however, antitrust legislation was used primarily to prevent the spread of organized labor, with conservative, antiunion judges ruling that unions and strikes interfered with interstate commerce and free trade.
The AFL concluded that federal antitrust legislation constituted the greatest impediment to further organizing. When the labor federation changed its position on political nonpartisanship and helped secure the election of Democratic presidential candidate Woodrow Wilson in 1912, AFL president Samuel Gompers used his influence to pressure the new president and the Democratic Party to overhaul federal antitrust legislation. When finally enacted, the Clayton Antitrust Act established that workers had the right to organize and that strikes were not illegal. It further restricted federal injunctions against unions and legal strikes.
Gompers insisted that the Clayton Act was “the greatest measure of humanitarian legislation in the world’s history” and would be remembered as labor’s “Magna Carta.” However, President Wilson was reluctant to enact “class legislation” and allowed powerful congressmen to insert loopholes in the law. The changes ensured that employers would continue to benefit from judicial intervention in labor disputes. Over the long term, the Clayton Act proved largely ineffective, prompting critics from both the left and the right to question Gompers’s tactics. Corporations opposed to organized labor were still able to rely upon judicial relief, as anti-union judges largely ignored the legislation and continued to issue restrictive injunctions.
Further reading: Melvin Dubofsky, The State and Labor in Modern America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).
—Robert Gordon
World History
