Organized labor may claim credit for being in the advance of
other institutions in the moralities of this matter of withdrawing
patronage. It hears witnesses, attempts conciliation, conserves
the rights of both parties to a dispute, and is reluctant to pro-
nounce judgment against even a defiant opponent of trade union-
ism. Herein it differs from many another class in the community,
for we can unhesitatingly say that the boycott, now generally
recognized by all classes of society throughout the world as an
instrument for remedying grievances, is taken up "instanter" by
bodies of people in "highly respectable" circles without giving
the persons so penalized any recourse except unconditional sur-
render. For example, a body of commuters near a large city will
in concert quit patronizing a railroad on a day's notice, if another
road is at hand to perform their service. Boycotts against men
in public life are threatened with a frequency that results in
usually leaving them to decide, in their skepticism, which crowd
they would rather have boycott them. A President of the United
States was not in the remote past menaced by the boycott of
one of the large religious denominations for not respecting its
Sabbath in its way. The Governor of New Jersey was boycotted
last summer by some of the members of the legislature because
of his outspoken strictures on their roysterous conduct during
the closing hours of the year's session. We have recently had
liquor boycotts, neighborhood meat boycotts, the cocoa boycott —
to bring about mitigation in the treatment of the enslaved negroes
who on the other side of the world gather raw cocoa. Turn which



216 LABOR AND THE EMPLOYER

way one will, wherever there is a grievance there is a boycott, or
at least talk of the boycott.
