the case was a criminal prosecution for a conspiracy. The substance of the charge in the indictment was a conspiracy to compel the Carrington Publishing Company, against its will, to discharge its workmen, and to employ such persons as the defendants and their associates might name. In other words, the conspiracy was to deprive the publishing company of the liberty of carrying on its business in its own way, and to compel it to "unionize its shop." This object was to be accomplished by boycotting the business of the corporation, and the threatened withdrawal of patronage. In one count of the indictment it was charged "that the defendants induced one person to discontinue his subscription to said newspaper, and attempted to induce sundry other persons from advertising therein, and that the corporation was greatly damaged." Three of the defendants were found guilty. This is what the court says concerning the offense charged:

"It seems strange that in this day and this free country-a country in which law interferes so little with the liberty of the individual-that it should be necessary to announce from the bench that every man may carry on his business as he pleases; may do what he will with his own so long as he does nothing unlawful and acts with due regard to the rights of others; and that the occasion for such an announcement should be, not an attempt by government to interfere with the rights of the citizen, nor by the rich and powerful to oppress the poor, but an attempt by a large body of workingmen to control, by means little if any better than force, the action of employers."

The court states that the defendants said in effect to the publishing company:

"You shall discharge men you have in your employ, and you shall hereafter employ only such men as we shall name. It is true, we have no interest in your business; we have no capital invested therein, we are in no wise responsible for its losses or failure, we are not directly benefited by its success, and we do not participate in its profits, yet we have a right to control its management and compel you to submit to our dictation."

The court says that the bare assertion of such a right is startling; that, if such a right existed, all business enterprises would be alike subject to the dictation and control of those who might assert it, and upon the same principle, and for the same reason, the right to determine what business men shall engage in, and when and where and how it shall be carried on, will be demanded, and must be conceded to associations of workingmen of the class of those whom it would be necessary to employ. And, speaking of the fact that a combination organized for a good purpose may be perverted by the power it wields to deprive others of their just rights, the court says:

"The intention by one man, so long as he does nothing, is not a crime which the law will take cognizance of; and so, too, of any number of men acting separately. But when several men form the intent, and come together and agree to carry it into execution, the case is changed. The agreement is a step in the direction of accomplishing the purpose. The combination becomes dangerous and subversive of the rights of others, and the law wisely says it is a crime. It is no answer to say that the conspiracy was for a lawful purpose to better their own condition, to fix and advance their rate of wages, and further their own material interest. It is certainly true that they had a right to such a purpose, and to use all lawful means to carry it into effect; and so a purpose to acquire property is lawful, so far as it contemplates

lawful means only. But if it contemplates the acquisition of money by means of murder, theft, fraud, or injustice, the end does not sanctify the means. Neither will these defendants be permitted to advance their material interests or otherwise better their condition by any such reprehensible means. They had a right to request the Carrington Publishing Company to discharge its workingmen and employ themselves, and to use all proper argument in support of their request. But they had not the right to say, 'You shall do this, or we will ruin your business.' Much less had they a right to proceed to ruin its business. In such a case the direct and primary object must be regarded as the destruction of the business. The fact that it is designed as a means to an end, and that end, in itself, considered a lawful one, does not divest the transaction of its criminality."

The court discusses other features of the case, and determines that the acts were in violation of law, and that the conviction was proper.

Crump v. Commonwealth, 84 Va. 927, 6 S. E. 620, 10 Am. St. Rep. 895, was an indictment for a conspiracy. Defendants and others, members of a typographical union, conspired to compel the proprietors of a printing office to unionize their office, and not to employ any printer who did not belong to the union. Pursuant to such conspiracy the defendants sent circulars to a large number of the customers of the printing office, informing them that they had, with the aid of other labor organizations, boycotted the printing office, and notifying the customers that the names of all who should continue to patronize the printing office after being notified of the boycott would be published in the labor paper, the organ of the union, as a black list, and they in turn would be boycotted until they agreed to withdraw their patronage from the boycotted establishment. The defendants declared it their set purpose to crush the boycotted establishment, and they used every means short of actual physical force to carry the purpose into effect. The Supreme Court of Appeals held that the acts alleged and proved in the case were unlawful and incompatible with the prosperity, peace, and civilization of the country, and if such acts could be perpetrated with impunity by combination, cabals, and cliques, there would be an end of government and of society itself. To the same effect is State v. Stewart, 59 Vt. 273, 9 Atl. 559, 59 Am. Rep. 710; State v. Donaldson, 32 N. J. Law, 151, 90 Am. Dec. 649.

In Casey v. Cincinnati Typographical Union No. 3 (in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of Ohio), 45 Fed. 135, 12 L. R. A. 193, the action was for an injunction restraining the defendants from boycotting complainant's newspaper. The defendant, Cincinnati Typographical Union, No. 3, had demanded that complainant should unionize his office (that is to say, publish and conduct his paper according to the custom, rules, and regulations laid down and prescribed by said union), and that he should pay his employés wages at such rates as should be fixed from time to time by the Union, and should discharge from his employment all persons not members thereof. The facts of this case are in some respects similar to those of the present case. Discussing these facts, the court said:

"That the defendant, the Typographical Union, set on foot a boycott against the complainant, as stated in the bill and in the affidavit on file, is not denied. 139 F.-6

That this boycott was to be enforced by threatening loss of business to those who, having no connection with the union, should continue to advertise with or in any way patronize the complainant, is clearly shown. True, it is claimed that no threats were used, but the language of the circulars has no doubtful meaning. The affidavits on file show that it was perfectly understood by those who received them, and the circumstances indicate that it was intended that it should be so understood. In Brace v. Evans, 3 Ry. & Corp. Law J. 561, it was held that the word 'boycott' is in itself a threat. In popular acceptation, it is an organized effort to exclude a person from business relations with others by persuasion, intimidation, and other acts which tend to violence, and thereby coerce him, through fear of resulting injury, to submit to dictation in the management of his affairs.' But it is insisted for the defendants that every representation of fact contained in their handbills and circulars is true; that is to say, that the complainant had in 1888 broken with the typographical union, discharged all union employés, and had since that date employed only those who were not members of the union, and that, after repeatedly promising to unionize his office, he had finally, in September, 1890, refused to do so, and declared that he would not employ any person who was connected with the union. All these are conceded facts. Therefore, argue counsel for the defendants, this is only a case of lawful competition. The complainant having declared that he would not employ any member of the union, the union had a right to say that its members would not patronize the complainant. Nobody disputes that proposition. If that were all that is involved in this case, there would be nothing for the court to act upon. But it is not all by any means. Instead of 'fair, although sharp and bitter, competition,' as is contended by counsel, it was an attempt by coercion to destroy all competition affecting the union. It was an organized conspiracy to force the complainant to yield his right to select his own workmen, and submit himself to the control of the union, and allow it to regulate prices for him, and to determine whom he should employ and whom discharge. In other words, it was and is an organized effort to force printers to come into the union, or be driven from their calling for want of employment, and to make the destruction of the complainant's business the penalty for his refusing to surrender to the union."

The court reviews the authorities upon the subject, and says:

"In the light of these authorities, it is idle to talk about the defendant's acts and publications as mere incidents of a competition set on foot by complainant's declaration that he would not employ union printers, that the publications are shielded by constitutional guaranties, or that, viewed in the most unfavorable light, they are nothing more than libels, and the only remedy for any injury resulting is by an action at law."

The motion for a temporary injunction was granted.

Thomas v. Cincinnati, N. O. & T. P. Ry. Co. (C. C.) 62 Fed. 803, was a proceeding upon a petition to have one Phelan adjudged guilty of contempt of court for the violation of an injunction issued out of the Circuit Court. The proceedings involved some of the facts relating to the great railroad strike in 1894, and which was mainly supported and carried on through an organization known as the American Railway Union, by Debs, Phelan, and others, for the purpose of compelling the Pullman Palace Car Company to comply with the demands of its employés. Judge Taft, Circuit Judge, heard the petition, and in his opinion discusses the various features of the case. Speaking of the combination to prevent the operation of the railroad, he says:

"It was a boycott. The employés of the railway companies had no grievance against their employers. Handling and hauling Pullman cars did not render their services any more burdensome. They had no complaint against the use of the Pullman cars as cars. They came into no natural relation

with Pullman in handling the cars. He paid them no wages. He did not regulate their hours or in any way determine their services. Simply to injure him in his business, they were incited and encouraged to compel the railway companies to withdraw custom from him by threats of quitting their service, and actually quitting their service. This inflicted an injury on the companies that was very great, and it was unlawful, because it was without lawful excuse. All the employés had the right to quit their employment, but they had no right to combine to quit in order thereby to compel their employer to withdraw from a mutually profitable relation with a third person for the purpose of injuring that third person, when the relation thus sought to be broken had no effect whatever on the character or reward of their service. It is the motive for quitting, and the end sought thereby, that make the injury inflicted unlawful, and the combination by which it is effected an unlawful conspiracy. The distinction between an ordinary, lawful, and peaceable strike, entered upon to obtain concessions in the terms of the strikers' employment, and a boycott, is not a fanciful one, or one which needs the power of fine distinction to determine which is which. Every laboring man recognizes the one or the other as quickly as the lawyer or the judge. The combination under discussion was a boycott. It was so termed by Debs, Phelan, and all engaged in it. Boycotts, though unaccompanied by violence or intimidation, have been pronounced unlawful in every state of the United States where the question has arisen, unless it be in Minnesota; and they are held to be unlawful in England."

The respondent was adjudged guilty of contempt of court, and sentenced to prison for a term of six months.

In Arthur v. Oakes (in the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit) 63 Fed. 310, 11 C. C. A. 209, 25 L. R. A. 414, Mr. Justice Harlan draws the distinction between the forming of a purpose by a single individual to injure another, and the combination of many persons for a like object. He says:

"It is one thing for a single individual, or for several individuals each acting upon his own responsibility and not in co-operation with others, to form the purpose of inflicting actual injury upon the property or rights of others. It is quite a different thing, in the eye of the law, for many persons to combine or conspire together with the intent not simply of asserting their rights or of accomplishing lawful ends by peaceable methods, but of employing their united energies to injure others or the public. An intent upon the part of a single person to injure the rights of others or of the public is not in itself a wrong of which the law will take cognizance, unless some injurious act be done in execution of the unlawful intent. But a combination of two or more persons with such an intent, and under circumstances that give them, when so combined, a power to do an injury they would not possess as individuals acting singly, has always been recognized as in itself wrongful and illegal."

Barr v. The Essex Trades Council, 53 N. J. Eq. 101, 30 Atl. 881, was an order to show cause why an injunction should not issue to restrain the defendants from boycotting complainant's business. The principal plaintiff was the proprietor and publisher of a daily morning newspaper called the Newark Times. He determined to use plate matter in the make-up of his paper, notwithstanding the interdictive resolution of the local typographical union, of which all his employés were at the time members. On this, some of them left his employment, others remained, and in consequence lost their membership. The union thereupon withdrew its indorsement of the paper, and reported the matter to the Trades Council, a representative association in which it and other trades unions were affiliated; the whole comprising a body of operatives in the county of

Essex of a purchasing capacity of $100,000 a week. After the publication by each side of its version of the difficulty, a circular was issued by the Trades Council calling on all friends to boycott the paper and to cease buying and advertising in it. The court held that a boycott of a newspaper started under these circumstances, in pursuance of which not only the members of the various societies were by their rules, but the public was by the circular, which was widely distributed, called on to cease buying or advertising therein, and personal application was made to actual advertisers by the distribution of printed circulars and resolutions of the societies, suggesting that they discontinue their advertising therein, even if they had made contracts to so advertise, enforced by a threat in the guise of a suggestion that if they did continue to do so they would also incur the enmity and opposition of organized labor, followed by damage to the proprietor of the paper from loss in circulation and advertising, was an actionable wrong.

My Maryland Lodge, No. 186, I. A. of M., v. Adt. (Md.) 59 Atl. 721, and Beck v. Railway Teamsters' Protective Union (Mich.) 77 N. W. 13, 42 L. R. A. 407, 74 Am. St. Rep. 421, are to the same effect; holding that a court of equity will interfere by injunction to restrain a combination of persons from boycotting complainant's business by intermeddling and coercing their customers to leave, and endeavoring by abusive and threatening language to drive away their employés.

The argument against the doctrine of the foregoing cases has been that it makes motive and combination elements of liability, contrary to the rule that an act which is not in itself actionable does not become so because the motive is malicious or bad, or because it is done in combination with two or more persons. This question was elaborately discussed in the House of Lords in Allen. v. Flood, A. C. 1898, p. 1, and the rule of nonliability applied in that case. But in the later case of Quinn v. Leathem, A. C. 1901, p. 495, the question was further discussed, and upon a state of facts similar to that in the present case it was held that the acts in question were unjustifiable and illegal, in that they were not performed in the line of legitimate trade competition, for the purpose of advancing the interests of the workmen themselves, but for the sole purpose of injuring the plaintiff in his trade, and that where a combination of two or more persons, without justification or excuse, injured a man in his trade by inducing his customers or servants to break their contracts with him, or not to deal with him or continue in his employment, they were liable in damages.

In the Supreme Court of the United States, in the late case of Aikens v. Wisconsin, 195 U. S. 194, 25 Sup. Ct. 3, 49 L. Ed. 154, it was contended, as in the English cases, that no one could be held answerable in law for the exercise of a legal right on the ground. that it was exercised with malevolent intent, and that the act of combining could never be considered a wrong or a crime when done in the exercise of a legal right which required for its exercise combination or co-operation. A statute of Wisconsin imposed imprisonment or fine on "any two or more persons who shall combine