The Delegate In The Park

A labor-union delegate was working inside a national park where, by act of Congress, a state's criminal syndicalism law applied. Prosecutors said he carried the union's literature, signed up new members and collected initiation fees and dues. They alleged the union was organized to advocate crime and sabotage, pointing to its preamble calling for abolition of the wage system, to testimony that it urged sabotage such as loading ships' cargo badly so it would shift, and to its boycott campaigns. He was charged with knowingly being a member of an organization formed to advocate, teach or aid criminal syndicalism. The defence argued that urging workers to slow down or do shoddy work only cut employers' profits and was not 'sabotage', which the law defined as wilful and malicious physical damage to property.