Against this law and the use of injunctions in labor disputes the Federation of Labor has introduced a bill through Congressman W. B. Wilson, which aims to free the unions from these legal obstacles by enacting that no right to continue the relation of employer to employee or to carry on business shall be construed as property or a property right; and that no agreement between two or more persons concerning conditions of employment or its termination shall constitute a conspiracy or an offense against the law unless it would be unlawful if done by a single individual, and that, therefore, such an act is not subject to injunctions. While neither of the great parties has definitely promised to support this particular measure, one party has made a vague promise to restrict injunctions, and the leaders of the progressive wings of both are quite definite about it. Nearly half of the House of Representatives voted for the repeal of the Sherman law as applied against union boycotts. Senator La Follette has demanded the abolition of this species of injunction, and Governor Woodrow Wilson has accused our federal courts of "elaborating a theory of conspiracy destined to bring 'the sympathetic strike' and what is termed 'the secondary boycott' under legal condemnation." Such reforms are not as radical as might appear to Americans, for the boycott is legal in Germany, while the crime of "conspiracy" was repealed in Great Britain in 1875, and the rights of strikers were further protected in that country by the repeal of the Taff Vale decision against picketing a few years ago, and yet unions are in no very strong position there. And weak as they are, the talk of compulsory arbitration is growing, and it seems only question of time until some modification of it is adopted. And, though the abuse of injunctions and the other forms of anti-union laws and decisions now prevailing will probably be done away with in this country, there is little doubt that here also employers will use some great coal or railroad strike as a pretext for enacting a compulsory arbitration law.[73] Similarly, as governments continue to take on new industrial functions, great importance is attached to the right of government employees, now denied, to organize and to join unions. Senator La Follette and other progressives also champion this right against President Taft, and will doubtless win their fight, but, as I shall show later a right to organize does not mean a right to strike--and there seems no probability that any government will fail to answer the effort to strike on any very large scale either by punishment for conspiracy against the State or by excluding the strikers permanently from government employment. They will doubtless be offered, as in France, instead of the right to strike, the right to submit their grievances as a body, if they wish it, to some government board (see Part III, Chapter VI).