The campaign against the labor injunstion

The recent congressional enactinent of the Norris-LaGuardia bill is the culmina tion of a protracted effort by organized labor to eliminate certain abuses incident to the use of in junctions in the federal courts in labor-dispute cases. The Clayton act of 1914, acclaimed by trade-union leaders at the time of its passage as "Labor's Magna Charta," had been so construed by the courts as to frustrate labor's hopes of it if not the intent of Congress in enacting it. The new statute, by explicit statement of the public pol/cy inspiring it, by the more careful itemization of activities protected from restraint and by new procedural safeguards, seems to be less vulnerable than its predecessor. However, even though it escapes emasculation by "interpretation" and survives the test of constitutionality, it cannot mark more than a partial realization of the program of organized labor with respect to the use of injunctions. There re mains the problem of regulation of the abuses incident to issuance of labor injunc tions by the state courts from which now these orders issue much more uumerously than from federal courts. Moreover, it seems probable that, in the measure that the Norris act does make federal courts less easy sources of injunctive relief for employers, they may be expected even more frequently to turn to the state courts.