, or
property of another, and proof of an overt act is not necessary. North
and South Carolina, Texas, and Connecticut passed the usual statute
protecting employees from being discharged because of membership in a
trades-union, which, as we have said, has been held unconstitutional
wherever contested. Arizona, California, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming
and Nevada enacted or amended eight-hour measures for employees in
mines, but little was accomplished for children in the Southern
States.[1]

[Footnote 1: See "Progressive Tendencies in the Labor Legislation of
1909," by Irene Osgood, in the _American Political Science Review_ for
May, 1910.]

The labor-injunction question has been recently covered by an
admirable study prepared by the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics and
published in December, 1909. The investigation covers eleven years,
from 1898 to 1908, in which there occurred two thousand and two
strikes. In sixty-six of these strikes the employers sought
injunctions and in forty-six cases injunctions were actually issued.
In only nine cases were there proceedings for contempt of these
injunctions, while only in two cases out of the two thousand were
there any convictions for contempt of court. In eighteen cases
injunctions were sought to prevent employees from striking, but
only in four of these were they granted, and one of these was later
dissolved. Seven bills were brought by employees against unions for
interference with their employment, etc., and in three cases unions
sought injunctions against other unions. In one case a union brought
a bill against an employer and in one case an employer sought an
injunction against an employers' association. Under a decision of the
Massachusetts Supreme Court it was declared unlawful for a trade-union
to impose fines upon those of its members who refused to obey its
orders to strike or engage in a boycott. In 1909 a bill was introduced
in the Legislature with the special object of permitting this, but it
failed of passage. The _Bulletin_ contains a brief history of equity
jurisdiction in labor cases and reprints all the decisions of the
Supreme Court of Massachusetts down to the year 1909, and the actual
injunctions issued by Superior Courts in five late cases, with a
chronological summary of proceedings in cases concerning industrial
disputes in all Massachusetts courts for the eleven years covered by
the report.

The matter of labor legislation is of such world-wide i