This boycott involved violence as an incident; the Supreme Court, however, has recently taken still more advanced ground, and decided that a peaceable boycott also violates the Sherman Act. In the last fifteen years a terrific warfare has raged between the American Federation of Labor and nearly all American manufacturers of hats. The American Federation has a membership variously estimated at from 1,500,000 to 2,000,000, including workmen in practically every State and Territory. It is, as its name implies, a central association organized for the purpose of bringing into one effective machine all the local labor organizations scattered throughout the country. It is an association of associations, and, as indicating its national scope, has its headquarters in Washington. It keeps constantly in touch with its membership through its monthly publication, the American Federationist, as well as through the many journals of the unions with which it is affiliated. It regularly employs nearly one thousand agents who continually push the interests of its members in the larger part of the United States and Canada. Mr. Samuel Gompers constantly uses this organization for the prosecution of inter-State boycotts. In his petition to intervene in the Danbury Hatters case, Mr. Gompers stated, over his own signature, that "the constitution of said American Federation of Labor makes special provision for the prosecution of boycotts, so-called, when instituted by a constituent or affiliated organization." In a public speech on May 1, 1908, Mr. Gompers declared that the Supreme Court might "as well dissolve and destroy the organization of labor as to enforce these decisions"--that is, the decisions against boycotts. Obviously, the Federation of Labor has an advantageous organization for work of this kind. A local union, with membership extending not beyond the limits of a town or State, could make little headway against a manufacturer against whose goods it had declared a boycott, inasmuch as his trade usually extends over a large area. The American Federation of Labor, however, by embracing the local unions' cause can make the boycott effective in practically every part of the country. In the last twelve years, Mr. Gompers' organization has declared four hundred and eight boycotts.