Gillespie v. Gibbons

Gillespie v. Gibbons

The Unions Shift into Power

Ben LeRoy
University High School, Urbana

On December 20, 1900, the Illinois Supreme Court convened and upheld the ruling of the Vermilion County Court on the case of Gillespie v. Gibbons. The case was a classic labor dispute between unions and employers. What was unusual about this case was that both courts ruled in favor of the defendant Reuben Gibbons and his union.

Illinois had a long list of labor disputes before Gillespie v. Gibbons. One of the most noteworthy is the Haymarket Riot and the events leading up to it. Cyrus McCormick started a reaper factory in Chicago. When he died, his son, Cyrus McCormick II, took over the business. He cut his workers' pay and made them work longer days, until finally the workers went on strike. McCormick hired strikebreakers called "scabs" to take the strikers' places. The strikers attacked the scabs, burning the rifles of the scabs' armed guards. Chicago's mayor did nothing to stop the mob, and McCormick was forced to go back to the old pay scale.

The next year, McCormick installed new machinery designed to replace the most troublesome workers. Although the machinery cost more than twice in maintenance than labor costs, McCormick thought he had crushed the union. He had not. When Myles McPadden, a union leader, led another strike, McCormick again hired scabs, this time protected by bribed police. Strikers attacked the scabs, but the police killed two and wounded several.

Union supporters called a mass meeting in Chicago's Haymarket Square to protest the shootings. The meeting was nearly ended when someone threw a cast-iron bomb at some policemen attending the meeting. When the dust settled, police arrested eight men for conspiracy and murder. Four were hanged, two had their death sentences changed to life incarceration, one was sentenced to fifteen years in jail, and one committed suicide in jail.

The seeds for the famous Pullman Strike were sown in the 1880s when George Pullman built the town of Pullman near Lake Calumet to manufac-

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Danville residents no doubt exchanged stories about the Gillespie v. Gibbons trial that took place at the Vermilion County Courthouse, not far from the business district.

ture his famous railway sleeping cars. All buildings in the town were company owned and rented to workers, churches, or stores. The company cut wages a number of times in the 1880s and 1890s, but failed to reduce the rent in the company housing. This "double squeeze" led to dire economic circumstances for the workers. Workers struck the car works on May 11, 1894. By late June, sympathetic railway workers agreed to boycott trains carrying Pullman cars nationwide. Federal troops were called in to keep the trains moving and to break the strike, prompting violence and looting in Chicago. With the arrest of Eugene Debs and other leaders in Chicago, the strike collapsed, and workers returned on August 2, 1894.

Mindful of these setbacks to the labor movement in Illinois, let us consider the circumstances arising in the late 1890s in what became the case of Gillespie v. Gibbons. Reuben Gibbons, a carpenter, was employed by Charles Gillespie, a contractor in Danville. Gibbons was employed for no definite length of time, but only by the day. While he was employed, he joined a legal labor union, Local Union No. 269. However, once he did this, Gillespie informed Gibbons he could not employ Gibbons if he desired to belong to the union. Gillespie claimed "unions were enemies of his in business" and that "it would not be consistent of him, under the circumstances, to employ union help."

Gibbons went to court pressing four alternate charges against Gillespie, all amounting to the point that Gillespie tried to force Gibbons from union membership. There was, and still is, a clause in the Illinois State Constitution declaring it a misdemeanor for employers "to attempt to keep employees from joining or belonging to labor organization by discharge or threats of discharge." Gibbons's lawyers based their suit on this clause. During the case, Gillespie countered that the statute was unconstitutional and void, as being in conflict with his Fourteenth Amendment rights under the United States Constitution that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of the law." In other words, Gillespie felt that the highest law of the nation gave an individual the right to hire or fire anyone he wanted; he interpreted his hired labor as his own property.

The Vermilion County Court disagreed with Gillespie. The judge rendered judgement ordering Gillespie to pay a fine of $25 and to remain in the county jail until that fine was paid. Gillespie appealed, and his case was brought before the Illinois Supreme Court. The court upheld the lower court's verdict, stating "At the time of the alleged offense there was in fact no contract of employment, but at that time Gillespie said, in substance, to Gibbons, 'I am not employing union men, and, if you belong to the union, you can look elsewhere for employment.' This was not a crime on the part of the plaintiff in error, Gillespie. His sole offense consisted in refusing to give employment to a man who belonged to a union labor organization."

Up until this time, the police and courts generally favored big companies, not unions and employees. This case helped swing the pendulum toward the union's favor. Never again in the history of Illinois would there be another Pullman, Haymarket or Gillespie v. Gibbons.—[From Gillespie v. People, 188 Ill. 176 (1900); Joy Hakim, A History of US: An Age of Extremes.]

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