Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/519

Rh forging or for being used for forging a trade-mark, to apply any false trade description to goods, to dispose of or have in possession any die, &c., for the purpose of forging a trade-mark, or to cause any of the above-mentioned things to be done. There are special sections in the Act dealing with its application to watches and watch-cases. Where a watch-case is of foreign manufacture it must, if stamped at an assay office in the United Kingdom, bear a mark differing from the mark placed upon watches manufactured in the United Kingdom. A warranty is implied in the sale of goods bearing a trade-mark or trade description. See.

In most foreign countries provisions have long existed for the registration of trade-marks; and they also form one of the classes of "industrial property" for the protection of which an international convention was formed in 1883. This convention now includes sixteen states, the more important being Belgium, France, Great Britain, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. The subjects of all the contracting states enjoy in each state the same rights and privileges as that state grants to its own subjects for the protection of trade-marks. Registration also in one of the states confers certain rights of priority in the others.

United States.—The legislation of the different States and Territories varies considerably, some providing for the registration of trade-marks either with or without protection for unregistered trade-marks, while others provide only for protection without registration. On March 3, 1881, Congress passed an Act "to authorize the registration of trade-marks and to protect the same," which provides that owners of trade-marks used in commerce with foreign nations or with the Indian tribes, provided such owners be domiciled in the United States or located in any foreign country or tribe which affords similar privileges to citizens of the United States, may obtain registration of trade-marks under the Act. Registration is not compulsory; failure to register a trade-mark, or to renew registration, does not deprive the owner of any remedy he might have at law or in equity; and the courts will, generally speaking, protect the unregistered equally with the registered.

For fuller information see L. B. Sebastian's Law of Trade Marks, or R. W. Wallace's edition of the Patents, Designs, and Trade Marks Act; and in America Rowland Cox's American Trade-Mark Cases. Cox's Manual of Trade-Mark Cases, and William Henry Brown's Treatise on the Law of Trade Marks.

 TRADE UNIONS are combinations for regulating the relations between workmen and masters, workmen and workmen, or masters and masters, or for imposing restrictive conditions on the conduct of any industry or business. By the common law all such combinations were, with certain rare and unimportant exceptions, regarded as illegal. They were considered to be contrary to public policy, and were treated as conspiracies in restraint of trade. Those who were engaged or concerned in them were liable to be criminally prosecuted by indictment or information, and to be punished on conviction by fine and imprisonment. The offence was precisely the same whether it was committed by masters or by workmen. But, although the provisions of the common law applied mutatis mutandis to both of them alike, it was, practically speaking, in reference rather to the latter than to the former that their effects were developed and ascertained. While it was held to be perfectly lawful for workmen, as individuals, to consent or to refuse to labour for any remuneration or for any time they pleased, when two or more of them joined together, and agreed to labour only on certain stipulated terms with respect either to the payment or the duration of their labour, they were guilty ipso facto of a misdemeanour. It was immaterial whether the end they had in view was to determine wages or to limit work; or whether the means they adopted for promoting its attainment was a simultaneous withdrawal from employment, an endeavour to prevent other workmen from resuming or taking employment, or an attempt to control the masters in the management of their trade, the engagement of journeymen or apprentices, or the use of machinery or industrial processes; or whether in seeking to enforce their demands they relied merely on advice and solicitation, or resorted to reproach and menace, or proceeded to actual violence. In any event their combination in itself constituted a criminal conspiracy, and rendered them amenable to prosecution and punishment. From the reign of Edward I. to the reign of George IV. the operation of the common law was enforced and enlarged by between thirty and forty Acts of Parliament, all of which were more or less distinctly and explicitly designed to prohibit and prevent what we have learned to describe and recognize as the "organization of labour." But the rise of the manufacturing system towards the end of the last century, and the revolution which accompanied it in the industrial arrangements of the country, were attended by a vast and unexpected extension of the movement which the legislature had for so long and with so much assiduity essayed to suppress. Among the multitudes of workmen who then began to be employed in single factories or in neighbouring factories in the same towns, trade unions in the form of secret societies speedily became numerous and active, and to meet the novel requirements of the situation a more summary method of procedure than that which had hitherto been available was provided by the 40th Geo. III. cap. 106. By this statute, passed in 1800, it was enacted that all persons combining with others to advance their wages or decrease the quantity of their work, or in any way to affect or control those who carried on any manufacture or trade in the conduct and management thereof, might be convicted before one justice of the peace, and might be committed to the common jail for any time not exceeding three calendar months, or be kept to hard labour in the house of correction for a term of two calendar months. The discontent and disorder of which, in conjunction with a state of commercial depression and national distress, the introduction of steam and improved appliances generally into British manufactures was productive in the first quarter of the current century led to the nomination of a select committee by the House of Commons, to inquire into the whole question of what were popularly and comprehensively designated the "combination laws," in the session of 1824. After taking evidence, the committee reported to the House that "those laws had not only not been efficient to prevent combinations either of masters or workmen, but on the contrary had, in the opinion of many of both parties, had a tendency to produce mutual irritation and distrust, and to give a violent character to the combinations, and to render them highly dangerous to the peace of the community." They further reported that in their judgment "masters and workmen should be freed from such restrictions as regards the rate of wages and the hours of working, and be left at perfect liberty to make such agreements as they mutually think proper." They therefore recommended that "the statute laws which interfered in these particulars between masters and workmen should be repealed," and also that "the common law under which a peaceable meeting of masters or workmen might be prosecuted should be altered." In pursuance of their report, the 4th Geo. IV. cap. 95 was at once drafted, brought in, and passed. But the immediate results of the change which it effected were regarded as so inconvenient, formidable, and alarming that in the session of 1825 the House of Commons appointed another select committee to re-examine the various problems, and review and reconsider the evidence which had been submitted to their predecessors in the previous year. They reported without delay in favour of the total repeal of the 4th Geo. IV. cap. 95, and the restoration of those provisions of the combination laws, whether statutory or customary, which it had been more particularly intended to abrogate. The consequence was the enactment of the 6th Geo. IV. cap. 129, of which the preamble declares that the 4th Geo. IV. cap. 95 had not been found effectual, and that combinations such as it had legalized were " injurious to trade and commerce, dangerous to the tranquillity of the country, and especially prejudicial to the interests of all who were concerned in them." The effect of the 6th Geo. IV. cap. 129 was to leave the common law of conspiracy 