The mill operators were not placed under oath, and the "trial" was in the nature of a formal debate. The testimony amounted to the fact that seasonal adjustments of production and employment were required to make flour milling a profitable pursuit. It was further asserted that flour milling was strongly influenced by out-of -State factors. To this the court agreed, dismissing the case as beyond its jurisdiction.
About 6,500 Kansas members of the Federated Shop Crafts walked out in July 1922 in protest against wage cuts proposed by the U. S. Railroad Labor Board. Militia companies were detailed to the strike centers. Strike-breakers were employed in several instances, and the strike was ultimately lost. A large part of the Kansas public, meanwhile, sided with the strikers. Many merchants placed cards in their windows which read: "We are for a living wage and fair working conditions. We are for the striking workmen 100 percent." Attorney General Richard J. Hopkins, in accordance with Section 15 of the regulations of the Court of Industrial Relations, declared that such cards were a form of picketing and therefore punishable by law.
William Allen White, Emporia editor and longtime friend of Governor Allen, placed a sign in the window of his printing shop that read: "We are for the striking workmen 49 percent." White was thereupon signaled out for "picketing" and held for trial, but the case was dismissed on December 8, 1922. "If I was within the law in contending for the right of free utterance for the public wholly outside the controversy," White said, "I should not have been subjected to a shanghied arrest. ... I was ku kluxed by a court that did not have the guts to pull out their shirt tails and give a ku klux parade."
Employees of the Wolf Packing Company, threatened by a wage cut, appeared before the Court of Industrial Relations, presented their case, and received an order granting an increase in pay. The officials of the packing company appealed to the State supreme court which upheld the decision. They then appealed to the United States Supreme Court which, in a decision written by Chief Justice Taft in 1923, held that the statute creating the Court of Industrial Relations was unconstitutional because it empowered the court to fix a minimum wage, pending the solution of a labor dispute. Two years later it was abolished by the legislature.
Kansas experienced 34 short lived local strikes throughout the decade ending in 1935. In that year, however, the members of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers' International Union ceased work in the lead and zinc fields at the southeast corner of the State. The strikers were replaced by non-union workers who were subsequently organized in a company union known as the Tri-State Metal Mine and Smelter Workers' Union, or, more commonly, the Blue Card Union.
The feud between the striking workers and the Blue Card unionists smoldered for about two years, and then burst into flame when the Committee for Industrial Organization undertook to aid the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers' International Union. On April 10, 1937, several men distributing leaflets for the CIO at a smelter in Joplin, Missouri, were seized by Blue Card unionists and severely beaten. On the following day about 5,000 members of the Blue Card Union met at Picher, Oklahoma, armed themselves with clubs and pick handles, dispersed a meeting of CIO organizers and wrecked the local hall of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers' International Union.