two labels in sequence, how hard can it be?

  I wanted to have a box starting with two labels, flush left, like:

..------------------------------------
|[label alpha]
|[label beta]
|...

  . Turned out, to add such a label, I had to do all of the following:

final javax.swing.Box vbox = javax.swing.Box.createVerticalBox();
{ final javax.swing.Box hbox = javax.swing.Box.createHorizontalBox();
  final javax.swing.JLabel label = new javax.swing.JLabel( "alpha" );
  hbox.add( label );
  hbox.add( javax.swing.Box.createGlue() );
  hbox.setMaximumSize
  ( new java.awt.Dimension
    ( java.lang.Integer.MAX_VALUE, label.getHeight() ));
  vbox.add( hbox ); }
....

  When I add the label to the vbox directly (without an hbox),
  it is not precisely aligned left, even when left alignment
  is request. There still seemed to be some ?glue? on the left
  of it, which I did not add there.

  When I do not setMaximumSize, the height of the hbox is much
  larger than the height of the label, that is: too large.

  But maybe my solution is too complicated? Is there a more
  simple solution that I am not aware of?