Labor Activities in Restraint of Trade: The Hutcheson Case

The jurisdictional dispute, which has plagued labor and the public alike almost from the beginning of organized labor, finally reached the Supreme Court in United States v. Hutcheson.\u27 The offense was an alleged unreasonable restraint upon interstate commerce in violation of Section of the Sherman Act. Having held, as the Court did last year in the Apex case,8 that the sit-down strike is quite virtuous4 -however much interference with trade and commerce-however much property damage and violence-and, irrespective of how legitimate or not the labor demand might be-it was perhaps to be expected that the jurisdictional strike, so-called, would also receive the Court\u27s unqualified blessing. At all events, that is what happened; Mr. Justice Frankfurter writing for the majority. And so-though a bit tardy-was delivered another sledge-hammer blow \u27 for the cause of labor -whatever may be said of the decision from the standpoint of the public welfare