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What Trust Methods Are Doing to Baseball David Fultz, Former Star Player, Revealing the Inside Workings of < ‘Organized ,, Base ball, Tells How “the Slavery” of the Play ers Cripples the Sport. A GROUP OF ORGANIZED BASEBALL OWNERS ANI) STOCKHOLDERS: of II om ton: llerninn MrKrrNon. of, lloNton: Mr. HiikmIok. of Dill ml <>lnh In: >lr. Miller, of Phllndelnhln t Chnrle* Kblieltn. of Itrooklrn: Mr. MeKeever. of Brook* l>n. Seated, from Irlt to rlulit—Sir. Loydi Mr. II eniiiji+ttiMi (new miner of “Ci Inntn" > j Mr*. Britton, of St. IjOhIm: (.itrry llerniniiu. of Clnelnniiti: ( linrlen Murphy, of Clileiuro. un«i Mr. MoKeever. of Hrooki> Copyright. 1018, by the Ster C Vnnpeny. Great Britain Rigtita Kctervad. By David Fultz I N order that the public may form an intelli gent. idea of the legal aspects of the base- hall business, it is necessary to understand the organization which conducts the game, as ^ ell as the legislation under which it operates. Organized baseball has been in existence s'nce the year 1875, and during most of that time it has had practically a monopoly over the sport as a profession On September 11, 1903, the National and the American Leagues, which foi * 1 , several years previous had been at war, adjusted their differences, and, with the , National Association, entered into a compact known as the National Agreement, under whic.. organized ball is now operated. The National Association is composed of forty leagues, practically every minor league In the United States and Canada; so that It can safely be said that the National Agree ment has a complete monopoly over profes sional baseball. The National Agreement provides for the creation of the National Commission, which Is the court of last resort in baseball. This body Is composed of the presidents of the two major leagues, and a third member, elected by them as chairman. At present this body is made up as follows: August Herrmann, presi dent of the Cincinnati Ball Club, chairman, and Thomas J. Lynch and Byron Bancroft Johnson, presidents of the National and the American Leagues, respectively. The player’s contract, which is a stipulat ed form, and from which there is no depart ure, except by special consent of the National Commission, refers to, and makes a part of itself, the National Agreement, the Rules and Regulations of the National Commission and the constitution of the league in which the player is to play. When a player signs a contract he binds himself for the rest of his natural existence; never again does he have the power of exer cising that inviolable right, the freedom of con tract; while the team is at no tjme bound for more than ten days. Every Fall the player is placed upon the reserve list, which means that he is the property of the team with which he last played, and that he must go where it sees tit to send him. He may be sent to California, ’ Texas. Canada, or any place within the reaches oT organized baseball, and that, too, without even being consulted. Not only is the place of his labor forced upon him, but also the sal ary at which he is to play. The star sometimes gets his price by threat of retirement, and be cause the public demands that he be secured at any price; the mediocre player as a rule has no more to say about the terms of his contract Gian he has about the tariff. Some of the mag nates are high-class gentlemen, and are fair and generous; others have had ail four feet in the trough for years. Knowing that the player is helpless, that no other team in the country dare attempt to sign him. they use the harpoon whenever it suits their fancy. With such absolute power as this in its hands, 1s it any wonder that organized ball has become oppressive, domineering, arrogant, and, in some cases, absolutely defiant of all moral and civil law! Is it a wonder that some of these men have grown hard, cruel and in human until they now look upon the player as their legitimate prey and regard any legal stand taken by him in the enforcement of his contractual rights as high treason, to be im mediately dealt with by the black list! Is it anv wonder that the players, goaded to the last degree by the unfairness of some of the mag nates, have formed themselves into an organi zation known as the Baseball Players’ Frater nity, for the protection of their rights, so that they may do collectively that which they as in dividuals would not dare attempt? The public gets a very incorrect idea of the players’ conditions on account of the large salaries received by some of the stars. These salaries are, however, no indication of what the average player gets. Ty Cobb received $9,500 last year; the contract of Charles L. Boardman with the Pittsburg team called for $800. Two players signed with the Chicago Cubs for $900 each; less per month than they got. in the Blue Grass League of Kentucky the year before. When “King” Cole, of the Chi cago Cubs, led the National League pitchers three years ago and practically won the pen nant for his team he was drawing $1,200. , Wljat Happened to Andy Coakley. As a matter of fact it may be noted that the Commission has made no provision for an in crease in salary to the player graduating from a minor to a major league, hut when the sit- >*alien is reversed, and the player is sent from a major to a minor league, it compels him to go at a cut in salary, and that, too, in violation of Ms contract. ’ The player’s contracl calls for payment of a /‘certain amount of money or Bis “unconditional release.” When lie is sold to a minor league, strange to sav, his contract is not assigned, hut so far as he knows, it drops out of exist ence. although it has not yet expired. He must go to the minor league team and sign a new contract at any figure that team sees fit to nay. The player naturally thinks that he should get the amount Ills original contract culled for. or his unconditional release, as it is by virtue of that contract that he is sent Id (he minor league. Guy Zinn and Tommy McMillan were victims of this sleight-of-hand performance only a few months ago at the hands .of the New York Americans, and Jack Knight had a similar experience. Knight signed a contract with the New York Amer icans for 1011-12-13 for $4,000 per season; he was sold to Washington, and during last sea son W-S sold by Washington to Jersey City. Jersey City, reduced his salary to $2,000 per season. Knight took his case to the National Commission, which decided that the Jersey Citv club acted within its rights. Cyrus Bar ger received tlie same treatment at the hands of the Brooklyn team last season; in fact, these cases could be enumerated almost in definitely. , ... In 1909 Andrew Coakley was sold by the Chicago National League team to Louisville. Louisville refused to give him the same salary Chicago had been paying, and Andy refused to report. About, a year later the writers firm began an action against the Chicago team on ^Oakley’s contract. Coakley was immediately declared an enemy to organized baseball, cer- A tain big league teams which had contracts for exhibition games with an independent team Coakley was operating ill' Jersey, cancelled these contracts, and Coakley was put out of business. Later they “got to” Andy, and he was induced, by promise of reinstatement, to withdraw his action. He was signed by the New York Americans, played for a few weeks and was then released. It is interesting to note the attitude of the National Commission as a body on this point, and it is best illustrated by their decision, No. 865, rendered in the case of Lester W. Wilson, who was released by the Boston American League team to New Bedford, dur ing the 1911 season. After the season, Bos ton paid Wilson the amount his contract called for, less $150 per month, the amount he had received from New Bedford, and the Commission, in commenting upon this fea ture, says; "The Commission considers the course ef ex-Pres1dent Taylor In practically carrying this player on the Boston club's pay roll, while he was In the service of a minor league club, and also after the disbandonment of the latter to the close of the American League race, censurable, its ultimate result be ing harmful alike to the minor league club and the player.” It is difficult for the uninitiated to follow this bewildering logic and discover how the player was injured by having his contract iiveff up to Three decisions recently handed down by the National Commission, were in cases in volving a rather intricate question of dam ages, the correct solution to which the Com mission got no closer to than did Dr. Cook get to the trapped end of the earth. These decisions were In the cases of player Edward A. Manning vs. York club, Decision No. 996; Raymond Whitcraft vs. Wilkes-Barre club, Decision No. 1,001, and Percy L. Merritt vs. Victoria club, Decision No. 1,019. The principle involved in these cases is the same, the facts differing only slightly. In each case the player was injured on the playing field, was paid full salary for a cer tain length of time, half salary for another period of time, and then suspended without pay. The decision of the National Commission in these particular cases, rendered long after the season was over, was that the club should pay the players’ salaries or give them unconditional releases, a decision which is manifestly unjust to the players. Had this decision been given at the time the clubs broke the contract it would have been fair, according to baseball law, but being rendered after the season was over and after the players had been held in suspension without pay during the weeks they should have been free agents, to permit the owners now- to retain the players’ money by giving them be lated releases is a travesty on justice. The Commission’s attention is called to the fact that & party may not violate a contract, sit idly and speculate on the outcome, and then decide whether or not he wishes to continue relations under it; and also to the principle that it is never the party breaking a contract who chooses what the measure of damages shall be, but rather the party who has been injured. Any other theory would put a prem ium upon the violation of contracts. It may be argued that these players, not being physically able to play, were not dam aged by not being allowed to sign with other teams. The answer to this is that no mat ter what the players’ physical condition was, they had a right to be free from all obliga tions under a violated contract. At any rate, no individual has a right to restrain the movements of others except through valid contract obligations. The release clause in the contract enables the club to rid itself of all obligations to the player at any time, upon ten days’ notice, but needless to say, gives no such right to the player. As harsh as this clause may seem, th ® r ® has now been grafted into it a joker which should stand as a monument to man’s cupidity. The release clause reads as follows: „ i« further understood and agreed that the party of the first part (the club) may, at any time after the heginnlns and prior to the completion of the period of this contract, give the party of the second part (the player) ten days written notice to end and de- David Fultz, Former Star Ball Player and President of the Baseball Players’ Fraternity. termine all its liabilities and obliga tions under this contract, in which event all liabilities and obligations under taken by said party of the first part, in this ’ contract, shall at once cease and determine at the expiration of said ten days; the said party of the second part shall thereupon be also freed and discharged from obligation to render services to said party of the first part.” One would naturally suppose, therefore, that when a player received ten days’ notice of his unconditional release, he would have the immediate right of disposing of his serv ices to begin upon the expiration of the ten- day period. Such, however, is not the case. Tucked away in the National Agreement is a provision reading as follows: “Article VI., Section 3. * * * When a major league club serves no tice of unconditional release on a play er, he shall be ineligible to contract with a club of another league, if, dur ing ten days after service of such no tice of release, a club of the league in which he is at the time playing shall demand his services.” The player is, therefore, deprived during the ten days of the right to negotiate for his future professional career unless w-ith one of , the other seven teams in the league in which he has been playing. This ivould seem to border very closely upon a private agreement to prevent a man from procuring employment. If, however, a magnate from another league ignores baseball law and makes the player an offer, as is sometimes done, the latter is pow erless to accept; the offer may be at an in creased salary, still the player cannot ne gotiate; the offer may require an immediate answer, as the magnate may have other men in view; but even this does not avail the player. And all this in spite of the fact that the player has received his "unconditional re lease,” and in spite of the fact, too, that no team in his league is under any obligation to employ him, or if it does, to pay him the salary already offered or even Lhe salary he ‘ had been receiving, but can compel him to play for any figure it sees fit to offer, “A Cheap F’orin of Graft.” This method of restricting the player who is of so little consequence to his team as to be released, in his right to obtain employ ment at the risk of his having to remain idle, is absolutely indefensible. If there is any possible way such a provision aids baseball, or if there is any conceivable reason these other seven clubs should have a right to the player’s services, the writer would like to know it. It is simply a cheap form of graft, and should be far beneath the dignity of the gentlemen who have formulated the legisla tion. The principal legislation regarding the re serve clause which is so often criticised is contained in the National Agreement, Article VI, Section I and Article VII, Section I. These clauses read, respectively, as follows: "All parties to this agreement pledge AUGUST The National themselves to recognize the rlpht of reservation and respect contracts be tween players and clubs under its pro tection.” The other clause, after outlining a plan for promulgating the list of reserve players, says: ... . . No player thus promul gated as reserved shall be eligible to contract or play with any National Agreement club other than that on whose list his name appears as a re serve players until he is regularly re leased by the reserving club, or is le gally declared a free agent.” To be absolutely fair to present baseball legislation, we wish to say that it is imper ative that a reserve clause of some kind should exist. Its abolition would mean that most of the stars would congregate upon the richer teams, the league races would be without in terest, and the player and the game would ultimately suffer. Contracts That Bind Only the Players That the clause should, however, exist with its present rigidity, is absolutely indefensible. It requires no legal turn^of mind to realize that wiien a contract calls for a renewal, it can mean nothing other than that the parties bind themselves to enter into another con tract embodying similar term3. It cannot mean that one party may do away with or change the obligation resting upon himself at his pleasure and still compel strict perform ance of the other party. This, however, is what organized ball has put over on the play ers for years, and that, too, with the express consent and assistance of the National Com mission. Now suppose you, my reader, are a skilled electrician, and have spent years perfecting yourself in your craft. You sign a year’s con tract at $3,000, containing a clause which pro vides for a renewal. The next year your employer hands you a contract which calls for $2,000, and tells you if you do not sign, no other electrical establishment will employ you. You are indignant and take your com plaint to a tribunal elected by yotir employer, which sits as a final arbiter in all such mat ters. They sustain your employer. You are incensed and determined to maintain your rights; you find a half-mast concern which will employ you. You work for a while, but you can’t make your cakes; the big fellows have all the business; you feel the inexorable HERRMANN. T, J. LYNCH. Commission, Who Are the “Last Word” Organized Baseball. grip of the system; you realize your helpless ness, and so you come back as meekly as the cows come to the bars for salt, to eat out of your former employer’s hand; you are willing to take anything he will give, but he says, “No, you were suspended for not signing your contract, and by working for a concern not in our agreement, you have committed an of fense which prevents our even acting upon your application for reinstatement for at least three years. Discipline must- be maintained. What right have you to dictate the salary you shall get for your services!” You hear the measured tread of soldiery, the dragging, clanking chains of exile, and for a momeut you think yourself in Siberia. Yet this is exactly the hall players’ situ ation. Listen! Last Winter the National Commission passed a salary limit in Class AA leagues. Hundreds of salaries were ar bitrarily cut; the players naturally demurred, and those in the International League re ceived the following letter from its president: “To international League Players, “Gentlemen: — According to rule passed by the National Association, at its annual meeting in Milwaukee last November, any player who does not sign and return his contract on or be fore March 1 Is liable to indefinite suspension, and will not be allowed to report at training camp for Spring practise. Respectfully, "BDW. G. BARLOW. “President.” Audiences Lose by System. And the result is a league full of dissatis fied players, who, no matter how hard they may try, cannot give that high degree of efficiency which comes only with enthusiasm. The spectator pays for the best that can be procured. The player gives about what he is paid for. The magnate pockets the difference and the public is the goat. Last year club owners made over $300,000 through the barter and sale of their players. Suppose one of these players, being unable to get a proper renewal of his contract, goes to an “outlaw” team; he immediately falls under the ban of Rule 20 of the Rules and Regulations of the National Commission, and is deprived for the period of three years of the right to make his living In his chosen profession. This rule reads in part as fol lows: B. B. JOHNSON, in Everything Connected with “In all cases of failure to report or desertion the offender may be rein stated with or without a line, in the discretion of the tribunal having jur isdiction, provided, however, that if the player shall have joined an out law team, ills application for the re moval of his disability shall not be acted on within three years after the commission of the offense.” You ask why the player doesn’t go to law! He doesn’t dare or he will be driven out of his profession; so he bares his back and takes his lashing. Many more instances of oppressive legisla tion and violations of contract could be men tioned did time and space permit. The Base ball Players’ Fraternity, which is composed of over 300 big league players, has made several applications this Winter to the powers regard ing certain changes in the conduct of the game. These requests have been absolutely fair and equitable, yet they have beBn summarily turned down. We expected nothing else— ' this has always been their method of organized ball, but how long will the player and the pub lic stand for such faithlessness, tyranny and oppression! Not always, surely! We expect the support of the public and even those in no way interested In baseball, because the great American people have always stood for the square deal and against the faction that plays the game with loaded dice. A Federal Investigation of the baseball busi ness, rumors of which are rife, is in no way unlikely, we regret Ri say, and had the powers paused for a few moments from their money getting, they, with their shrewdness, would have long ago discerned the trend of the times. As long as baseball kept reasonably close to the realm of sport slight infractions of Fed eral law, if there were such, were condoned; hut now that it has become commercialized, players less than living wages, baseball must obey the laws just as all other businesses. Should this investigation materialize and should Congress, in its zeal, go further than Is necessary, as sometimes is the case, organized baseball will have only itself to blame; it will simply be paying the penalty suffered by many another faction which has deemed itself su perior to government and lias ridden roughshod over tlie rights of those unable to protect themselves, until at last the law has stepped In and called it to account. The Lesson in the Popular Attacks on the Supreme Court By Supreme Court Justice OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (IN AN INTERVIEW) I X that visible court,^ to which for ten years it has been my opportunity to belong, we are very quiet. But it is the quiet of a storm centre. Silence has taught the world skepticism and has made it legitimate to put everything to the test of proof. Many beautiful and noble reverences are impaired, but In these days no one can com plain if any institution or system of belief is call ed on to justify its continuance in life. Of course we are not excepted and have not escaped Doubts are expressed that go to our very being Not only are we told that when Marshall pro nounced an act of Congress unconstitutional he usurped a power that the Constitution did not give, but we are told that we are the repre sentatives of a class—a l tool of the money power, I get letters, not always anonymous, intimating that we are corrupt. I admit that it makes my heart ache. It is very painful, when one spends all the energies of one’s soul in trying to do good work, with no thought but th^t of solving the problem according to the rules by which one is hound, to know that many see sinister mo tives and would be glad of evidence that one was consciously bad. The attacks upon the Court are merely an ex pression of the unrest that seems to wonder vaguely whether law and ordenrpay. When the ignorant are taught to doubt, they do not know what they safely may believe. And it seems to uie that at this time we need education in the obvious more than investigation of the obscure. 1 do not see so much immediate use in commit tees on the high cost of living, and inquiries hoV far it is due to the increased production of gold, how far to the narrowing cattle ranges and the growth of population, how far to the bugaboo, as I do in bringing home to people a few social and economic truths. Most men think dramatically, not quanti tatively—a fact that the rich would be wise to remember more than they do. We are apt to contrast the palace with the hovel, the dinner at Sherry’s with the workingman's dinner pail, and never ask how much or realize how little is withdrawn to make the prizes of success. We are apt to think of ow nership as a terminus, not as a gateway—and not to realize that except the tax levied for personal consumption, large ownership means investment, and investment means the direction of labor toward the pro duction of the greatest return, returns that so far as they are great show by the very fact that they are consumed by the many, not alone by the few. We need to think things instead of words—to drop ownership, money, and to think of the stream, of products;' of wheat and cloth and railway travel. When we do, it is obvious that the many consume them; that they how as truly have substantially all there is as if the title were in the. United States; that the great body of property is socially administered now, and that the function of private ownership is to define and advance the equilibrium of social de sire— whicli socialism equally would have to define, but which, under the i.iusion of self- seeking, is more shrewdly foreseen I should like to see it brought home to the public that the question of fair prices is due to the fact that none of us can have as much as we want of at! the things we want. As less will be produced than the public wants, the question arises as to how much of each product it will have and how much it can go without. Thus the final competition is be tween the objects of desire, and therefore be tween the producers of those objects. When we oppose labor and capital, labor means the group that is selling its product and capital all the other groups that are buying it. The hated cap italist is simply the mediator, the prophet, the adjuster, according to his divination of the fu ture desire. If one could get that believed, the body of the people would have no doubt as to the value of law. That is my outside thought on the present discontents. As to the truth embodied in them, in part it cannot be helped. it cannot be helped, it is as it should be. that the law is be hind the times. I told a labor leader once that what they ask was a favor, and if a decision was against them, if the favor was denied, they called it wicked. Tlie same might be said of their opponents. The taw is growing. As.a11 law embodies beliefs that have triumphed In the battle of ideas and then have translated themselves into action; while there still is doubt, while opposite conditions still keep a battle front against each other, the time for law has not come; the notion destined to prevail is not yet entitled to the field. It is a misfortune if a judge reads his con scious or unconscious sympathy with one side or the other prematurely into the law and for gets that what seem to him to bp the first prin ciples are believed by half bis fellow men to be wrong. I think that we have suffered from this misfortune, in State courts at. least, and that this is another and very important truth to be extracted from the popular discontent. When, twenty years ago. a vague terror went over the earth and the word Socialism began to be heard, I thought and still think that fear was translated into doctrines that had no proper place in the Constitution or the common law. Judges are apt to be naive, simple-minded men, and they need something of Mephistopheles. We, too, need education in the obvious—to learn to transcend our own convictions and to leave room for much that we hold dear to be done away with short of revolution by the orderly change of law. . 1 have no belief in panaceas and almost none in sudden ruin, I believe with Montesquieu that if the chance of a battle—1 may add, the pas sage of a law—has ruined a State, there was a general cause at work that made the State ready to perish by a single law. Hence I am not much interested one way or the other in the nostrums now so strenuously urged. I do not think the United States would come to an end if we lost our power to declare an act of Congress void. I do think the Union would be imperilled if we could not make that declaration as to the laws of the several States. One in my place sees how often a local policy prevails with those who are not trained to na tional views: and how often action is taken that embodies what the commerce clause was meant to end. For most of the things that properly can be called evils in the present state of the law, [ think the main remedy, as for the evils of public opinion, is for us to grow more civilized. 1 surmise it will be a slow business for our people to reach national views, assuming that we are allowed to work peaceably to that end. My apprehension is that, competition from new races will cut deeper than working men’s dis putes, and will test whether we can hang to gether and can fight. However, though f fear that we are running through the world s re sources at. a pace that we cannot keep. I do not lose my hopes. 1 do not pin my dreams for the future to my country or even to my race. I think it probable that civilization somehow will last as long as I care to look ahead—per haps the smaller numbers, hut perhaps also bred to greatness and splendor of silence. I think it not Improbable that man—like the grub that prepares a chamber for the winged thing it never has seen but is to be that man may have cosmic destiny that he does not under stand. And so beyond the vision of battling races and an impoverished earth I catch a gleam ing glimpse of peace. If a man's ambition is the thirst for a power that comes not from office but from within, he never can he sure that any happiness is not a fool's paradise—be never can be sure that he sits on that other bench reserved for the masters of those who know'. Until one draws near seventy, one is less likely to hear the trumpets than the rolling fire of the front. 1 have passed that age and I still am on the firing line, only in rare moments there comes a pause, and for half an hour one feels a trembling hope. They are the rew ards of a lifetime's work. I was walking homeward one evening on Penn sylvania Avenue near the Treasury in Washing ton- and a dream was pictured to my mind. As I looked beyond Sherman's statue to the west the sky was aflame with scarlet and crimson from the setting sun. But, like the noted down fall In Wagner's opera, below the skyline there came from little globes the pallid discord of the electric lights. And I thought to myself the Gotterdammerung will end, and from those globes clustered like evil eggs will come the new masters of the sky. It is like the time in which we live. But then I remembered the faith that I partly have expressed, faith in a universe not measured by our fears, a universe that has thought and more than thought Inside of it, and as 1 gazed after the sunset and above the electric lights—there shone the stars’.