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and was an effort to kill the trade unions they thought. They wanted absolute abolition of the use of the injunction so as to give the trade unions freedom to organize and operate. That was before anybody had ever thought of the National Labor Relations Act, which was just a carrying on of that same idea in the end, although it had some fancy trimmings.

I do differentiate between trade union legislation and the legislation we were fostering, because legislation that was prepared by a very small handful of skilled workers to protect their own jobs was really special legislation for them. It was not legislation that benefited all working people. They never had any national legislation until the New Deal. It was always considered that it was impossible. It was regarded as unconstitutional. The bakers tried to get a law to regulate the hours of work of bakers and the Supreme Court threw it out on the grounds that there was nothing in the Constitution that permitted this regulation of hours. A man's right to contract was interfered with by any regulation of hours. He contracted to work for whatever he was willing to work for and as many hours as he was willing to contract for.

Samuel Gompers, of course, was the head of the American Federation of Labor and I only knew him as one who had everything in the world to say about the political attitudes of Labor.