Opinion of the Court.

the prime and paramount concern of Congress in enacting the anti-trust laws, of which the section under consideration forms after all a part.

I say again and I speak for, I believe, practically every member of the Judiciary Committee that if this section did legalize the secondary boycott there would not be a man vote for it. It is not the purpose of the committee to authorize it, and I do not think any person in this House wants to do it. We confine the boycotting to the parties to the dispute, allowing parties to cease to patronize that party and to ask others to cease to patronize the party to the dispute.

Reaching the conclusion, as we do, that complainant has a clear right to an injunction under the Sherman Act as amended by the Clayton Act, it becomes unnecessary to consider whether a like result would follow under the common law or local statutes; there being no suggestion that relief thereunder could be broader than that to which complainant is entitled under the acts of Congress.

There should be an injunction against defendants and the associations represented by them, and all members of those associations, restraining them, according to the prayer of the bill, from interfering or attempting to interfere with the sale, transportation, or delivery in interstate commerce of any printing press or presses manufactured by the complainant, or the transportation, carting, installation, use, operation, exhibition, display, or repairing of any such press or presses, or the performance of any contract or contracts made by complainant respecting the sale, transportation, delivery, or installation of any such press or presses, by causing or threatening to cause loss, damage, trouble, or inconvenience to any person, firm, or corporation concerned in the purchase, transportation, carting, installation, use, operation, exhibition, display, or repairing of any such press or presses, or the performance of any such contract of contracts; and also and especially from using any force, threats, command, direction, or even persuasion with the object or having the effect of causing any person or persons to decline employment, cease employment, or not seek employment, or to refrain from work or cease working under any person, firm, or corporation being a purchaser or prospective pur

Brandeis, Holmes and Clarke, JJ., dissenting.

chaser of any printing press or presses from complainant, [479] or engaged in hauling, carting, delivering, installing, handling, using, operating, or repairing any such press or presses for any customer of complainant. Other threatened conduct by defendants or the associations they represent, or the members of such associations, in furtherance of the secondary boycott should be included in the injunction according to the proofs.

Complainant is entitled to its costs in this court and in both courts below.

Decree reversed, and the cause remanded to the District Court for further proceedings in conformity with this opinion.

Mr. Justice BRANDEIS, dissenting, with whom Mr. Justice HOLMES and Mr. Justice CLARKE concur.

The Duplex Company, a manufacturer of newspaper printing presses, seeks to enjoin officials of the machinists' and affiliated unions from interfering with its business by inducing their members not to work for plaintiff or its customers in connection with the setting up of presses made by it. Unlike Hitchman Coal & Coke Co. v. Mitchell (245 U. S. 229), there is here no charge that defendants are inducing employees to break their contracts. Nor is it now urged that defendants threaten acts of violence. But plaintiff insists that the acts complained of violate both the common law of New York and the Sherman Act and that, accordingly, it is entitled to relief by injunction under the state law and under § 16 of the Clayton Act (October 15, 1914, c. 323, 38 Stat. 730, 737).

The defendants admit interference with plaintiff's business but justify on the following ground: There are in the United States only four manufacturers of such presses; and they are in active competition. Between 1909 and 1913 the machinists' union induced three of [480] them to recognize and deal with the union, to grant the eighthour day, to establish a minimum wage scale and to comply with other union requirements. The fourth, the Duplex Company, refused to recognize the union; insisted upon

Brandeis, Holmes and Clarke, JJ., dissenting.

conducting its factory on the open shop principle; refused to introduce the eight-hour day and operated for the most part, ten hours a day; refused to establish a minimum. wage scale; and disregarded other union standards. Thereupon two of the three manufacturers who had assented to union conditions, notified the union that they should be obliged to terminate their agreements with it unless their competitor, the Duplex Company, also entered into the agreement with the union, which, in giving more favorable terms to labor, imposed correspondingly greater burdens upon the employer. Because the Duplex Company refused to enter into such an agreement and in order to induce it to do so, the machinists' union declared a strike at its factory, and in aid of that strike instructed its members and the members of affiliated unions not to work on the installation of presses which plaintiff had delivered in New York. Defendants insist that by the common law of New York, where the acts complained of were done, and where this suit was brought, and also by § 20 of the Clayton Act (38 Stat. 730, 738), the facts constitute a justification for this interference with plaintiff's business.

First. As to the rights at common law: Defendants' justification is that of self-interest. They have supported the strike at the employer's factory by a strike elsewhere against its product. They have injured the plaintiff, not maliciously, but in self-defense. They contend that the Duplex Company's refusal to deal with the machinists' union and to observe its standards threatened the interest not only of such union members as were its factory employees, but even more of all members of the several affiliated unions employed by plaintiff's competitors and [481] by others whose more advanced standards the plaintiff was, in reality, attacking; and that none of the defendants and no person whom they are endeavoring to induce to refrain from working in connection with the setting up of presses made by plaintiff is an outsider, an interloper.

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Brandeis, Holmes and Clarke, JJ., dissenting.

In other words, that the contest between the company and the machinists' union involves vitally the interest of every person whose coöperation is sought. May not all with a common interest join in refusing to expend their labor upon articles whose very production constitutes an attack upon their standard of living and the institution which they are convinced supports it? Applying common-law principles the answer should, in my opinion, be: Yes, if as matter of fact those who so coöperate have a common interest.

The change in the law by which strikes once illegal and even criminal are now recognized as lawful was effected in America largely without the intervention of legislation. This reversal of a common-law rule was not due to the rejection by the courts of one principle and the adoption in its stead of another, but a better realization of the facts of industrial life. It is conceded that, although the strike of the workmen in plaintiff's factory injured its business, the strike was not an actionable wrong; because the obvious self-interest of the strikers constituted a justification. See Pickett v. Walsh, 192 Massachusetts, 572. Formerly courts held that self-interest could not be so served. Commons, History of Labor in the United States, vol. 2, c. 5. But even after strikes to raise wages or reduce hours were held to be legal because of the self-interest, some courts held that there was not sufficient causal relationship between a strike to unionize a shop and the self-interest of the strikers to justify injuries inflicted. Plant v. Woods (176 Massachusetts, 492); Lucke v. Clothing Cutters' Assembly (77 Maryland, 396); Erdman v. Mitchell (207 Pa. St. 79). [482] But other courts, repeating the same legal formula. found that there was justification, because they viewed the facts differently. National Protective Association v. Cumming (170 N. Y. 315); Kemp v. Division No. 241 (255 Illinois, 213); Roddy v. United Mine Workers (41 Oklahoma, 621). When centralization in the control of business

Brandeis, Holmes and Clarke, JJ., dissenting.

brought its corresponding centralization in the organization of workingmen, new facts had to be appraised. A single employer might, as in this case, threaten the standing of the whole organization and the standards of all its members; and when he did so the union, in order to protect itself, would naturally refuse to work on his materials wherever found. When such a situation was first presented to the courts, judges concluded that the intervention of the purchaser of the materials established an insulation through which the direct relationship of the employer and the workingmen did not penetrate; and the strike against the material was considered a strike against the purchaser by unaffected third parties. Burnham v. Dowd (217 Massachusetts, 351); Purvis v. United Brotherhood (214 Pa. St. 348); Booth v. Burgess (72 N. J. Eq. 181). But other courts, with better appreciation of the facts of industry, recognized the unity of interest throughout the union, and that, in refusing to work on materials which threatened it, the union was only refusing to aid in destroying itself. Bossert v. Dhuy (221 N. Y. 342); Cohn & Roth Electric Co. v. Bricklayers Union (92 Connecticut, 161); Gill Engraving Co. v. Doerr (214 Fed. Rep. 111); State v. Van Pelt (136 N. C. 633); Grant Construction Co. v. St. Paul Building Trades Council (136 Minnesota, 167); Pierce v. Stablemen's Union (156 California, 70, 76).

So, in the case at bar, deciding a question of fact upon the evidence introduced and matters of common knowledge, I should say, as the two lower courts apparently have said. that the defendants and those from whom they [483] sought coöperation have a common interest which the plaintiff threatened. This view is in harmony with the views of the Court of Appeals of New York. For in New York, although boycotts like that in Loewe v. Lawlor (208 U. S. 274), are illegal because they are conducted not against a product but against those who deal in it and are carried out by a combination of persons not united by common interest but only by sympathy, Auburn Draying Co. v. Wardell (227 N. Y. 1), it