Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/875

839 NOTES 839 such an act a wrong to the state, to say nothing of taking the further step and declaring it a tort. Admittedly there is a social interest in the unhampered production of wealth, this interest being stronger when there is a great national need for the product in question. It is also true that such considerations of public interest will often induce equity to act where it would otherwise not act. Thus specific performance of contracts involving continuous performance and supervision of the most difficult sort has been decreed because there was a strong public policy in favor of having the contract carried out.^ Equity has also enjoined an illegal quitting of work by railroad employees because they were in the public service.^ It must never be lost sight of, however, that in these cases it was a legal right of the plaintiff which was enforced, and that the public interest involved went merely to the exercise of the court's discretion in granting the ex- traordinary remedies of equity. In the principal case there was no legal right in the plaintiff to have his employees refrain from striking during the war. It follows that an injunction should not have issued.^" Restraint of Princes. — The " restraint-of -princes " clause, of ancient origin,^ has since the beginning of the war been the subject of taining recommendations as to the "Principles and Policies to Govern Relations be- tween Workers and Employers for the Duration of the War." The pamphlet stated that " there should be no strikes and lockouts during the war." The court cited this as a "declaration by the United States Government of the principles which govern it in deaUng with labor disputes in war industries." In so far as it is a declaration by the government it would seem to indicate that the government intended to limit itself to such an appeal and not to resort to compulsion to secure continuity of work in war industries. It is not for the court to alter this pohcy. (1896); Joy V. United States, 138 U. S. i (1891); Edison Illuminating Co. v. Eastern Pennsylvania Power Co., 253 Pa. 457, 98 Atl. 652 (1916); Schmidtz v. Railroad Co., loi Ky. 441 (1897). In Conger v. Railroad Co., 120 N. Y. 29, 23 N. E. 983 (1890), specific performance of a contract was denied because of the public interest in non- performance. ^ Toledo, etc. Ry. Co. v. Pennsylvania Co., 54 Fed. 746 (1893). 1" A recent case in New Jersey, Driver v. Smith, 104 Atl. 717 (1918), presents the reverse of the situation in the principal case, specific performance of a contract which interfered with war work being denied. In that case the defendant, an essential em- ployee in a war industry, had contracted to leave his position and to work for the plaintiff. Upon his refusal to do so the plaintiff sought to enjoin breach of the nega- tive side of the contract, not to work for anyone but the plaintiff. The court denied the injunction, on the ground that the evidence showed that the plaintiff had made this contract solely to injure the defendant's employer, and that he had no legitimate interest in its enforcement. The court expressly denied that it would refuse relief merely because the defendant was essential to war work, saying in the course of the opinion: "It would be an intoler- able situation if each court before whom the rights of individuals were Utigated were permitted to determine whether relief should be granted or withheld upon its opinion as to whether the granting or withholding of its relief would aid or injure the govern- ment in its war activities. . . ." 1 The origin of the clause, although obscure, waS probably continental. See Emeri- GON, iNStTRANCE, c. 12, § 30 (Meredith's ed.), 420, and the citations of other conti- nental writers in i Phillips, Insurance, 5 ed., par. 1115. See, also, i Parsons, Marine Insurance, 575 et seq. Cf. the limited definition in i Calvo, Dictionnaire DE Droit International, 61, tit., "Arrdt de Prince."
 * Union Pacific Ry. Co. v. Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Ry. Co., 163 U. S. 564