Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 17.pdf/33

 THE GREEN BAG any purpose by any method. It is neces sary to-day, therefore, to make many dis tinctions before it can be determined whether any designated plan may be attempted by a combination by any given course of action.

His reasoning is thoroughgoing as the fol lowing extract will show: "Associations have no more right to inflict injury upon others than individuals have. All combinations and associations designed to coerce work men to become members, or to interfere with, Ill obstruct, vex, or annoy them in working, This present state of the law is well shown or in obtaining work, because they are not by a parley between judge and counsel in members, or in order to induce them to the case of Re Doolittle and Another, become members, or designed to prevent strikers, 23 Fed. 344 thus reported: — employers from making a just discrimina "Mr. Charles C Allen. Do I understand tion in the rate of wages paid to the skillful your Honor to say that the act of striking — and to the unskillful; to the diligent and merely carrying out of the strike — was to the lazy; to the efficient and to the ineffi unlawful? THE COURT (Judge BREWER). cient; and all associations designed to in It is not the mere stopping themselves to terfere with the perfect freedom of employers gether, but it is preventing the owners of in the proper management and control of the road from managing their own engines their lawful business, or to dictate in any and running their own cars, that is where particular the terms upon which their busi the wrong comes in. Anybody has a right ness shall be conducted, by means of threats, to quit work, but in interfering with other of injury or loss, by interference with their persons working, and preventing the owners property or traffic, or with their lawful em of railroad trains from managing those trains ployment of other persons, or designed to as they see fit, there is where the wrong abridge any of these rights, — are pro tanto illegal combinations or associations; and all comes in." A scientific application of this distinction acts done in furtherance of such intentions to a difficult state of facts is seen in Old by such means, and accompanied by damage Dominion Steamship Company v. McKenna, are actionable." 30 Fed. 48. This action was brought to. By the present law then, mere striking recover $20,000 damages, alleged to have is not in itself wrong, and, therefore, merely been sustained by the plaintiff through the | threatening to strike is often permissible. unlawful action of the defendants in a strike But on the other hand the trades union is of longshoremen, and in their attempt to always put to its justification whenever a boycott the plaintiff in its business. The strike is called or planned. Individuals who defendants styled themselves the Executive interfere with the existing relations of others Board of the Ocean Association of the Long must show some affirmative reason in public shoremen's Union. Not being in plaintiff's policy why they should be excused; and by employ, and without any legal justification, the same theory whenever the operations so far as appeared they procured plaintiff's of a combination are proved to be subver workmen in New York and in southern ports sive of the true interests of society, its actions to quit work in a body until it should accede will be stopped. Even competition is only to the defendant's demands, and pay south a permission, granted when its operation ern' negroes the same wages as New York is best for established society, forbidden when it is prejudicial to the industrial order. longshoremen. Mr. lustice Brown held that such unwar Therefore there may be acts that may be rantable interference by these combined safely permitted single individuals which it defendants constituted an invasion of the might be dangerous to allow combinations business right of the plaintiff company. to do.