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ing the Hobbs Act in 1946.23 This time, Congress eliminated

the exception for "the payment of wages by a bona fide

employer to a bona fide employee," on which the Supreme

Court had based its Local 807 decision.

The Hobbs Act took aim at a wide spectrum of union

violence, not just the use of force to obtain payments for

unwanted services, as in Local 807.  Rep. Jack Anderson

(R-Calif.) referred to a dispute in San Francisco where

Teamsters militants forced drivers entering the city either

to join the union or hand over their trucks while in the

city.24   He also pointed to an organizing drive in which

the Teamsters' refusal to carry dairy farmers' milk into

San Francisco had resulted in considerable financial losses

due to spoilage.

Those acts of "coercion" inhibiting commerce were cer-

tainly considered extortion under the Hobbs Act, even

though they were intended to achieve an otherwise "legiti-

mate" end, the acquisition of new union members.  Rep. H.

Streett Baldwin (D-Md.) summed it up this way:  "I do not

take the position that labor has not the right to organize

or to strike, but when they do so they should abide by the

. . . laws of decency.  If they had done that, we would

not have this legislation before the House today."25

Reflecting that perspective, the Hobbs Act provides

that

[w]hoever in any way or degree obstructs, delays,

or affects commerce or the movement of any arti-

cle or commodity in commerce, by robbery or

extortion or attempts or conspires so to do, or

commits or threatens physical violence to any

person or property in furtherance of a plan or

purpose to do anything in violation of this sec-

tion shall be fined not more than $10,000 or

imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.26

That text seems unambiguous.  Nevertheless, in defin-

ing extortion as "the obtaining of property . . . by

wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence or

fear,"27   Congress left a narrow opening through which the

U.S. Supreme Court would push a bulldozer in 1973.

In the Enmons28 case, three members of the

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) were

indicted for firing high-powered rifles at three utility

company transformers, draining the oil from a transformer,

and blowing up a substation.  However, the U.S. District

Court in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, dismissed the charges on