tion, or agreement, or other restriction that will deprive the individual of his freedom, whether voluntary or otherwise. If the law, to secure freedom of competition, accords to individuals unusual freedom, it likewise, for the same purpose, greatly restricts their actions when they pass from the relation of so many units to an association or combination. All agreements between two or more persons the object of which is to control the price at which the parties to such agreements shall sell their commodities, the amount of goods which they shall produce or sell, or generally to restrain trade and commerce are illegal and void as against public policy. The law is exceedingly strict in this regard. It insists that the determination of all these things shall be left to individual discretion. Under the common law, however, the penalty for making such an agreement consists in the refusal on the part of the courts to enforce them. It results therefore that the parties thereto may each individually carry out such an illegal agreement, without suffering any criminal liability. If one fails to carry out such an agreement, however, the other parties to the agreement cannot compel him to do so. They cannot enforce against him any fine or secure damages for any loss to them caused by his failures. The court will help neither party in such a transaction, but will treat the illegal contract as void. Many contracts of this sort, involving capital, have been the basis of litigation, and the courts have again and again condemned them as against public policy. It is apparent that when such agreements between laboring men are disregarded by the parties thereto they may be deprived of further advantages and privileges under the agreement or association, but the other parties. to the agreement would not be likely to consider it worth while to sue the violators of the agreement for money damages. The courts have therefore but seldom passed upon the legality of contracts to raise or regulate wages. The fact that comparatively few decisions can be found condemning contracts restricting free competition in labor has led some writers to question whether the law did not consider associations of labor more favorably than combinations of capital. We believe, however, the case of More vs. Bennett, decided by the Illinois Supreme Court, is directly in point, and correctly expresses the law. In this case one member of the Chicago Law Stenographic Association sought to recover damages from another member because the latter had broken the rules. The court said of the association: "It clearly appears, both from its constitution and by-laws, and from the averments of the declaration, that one of the objects, if not the leading object, is to control the prices to be charged by its members for

stenographic work by restraining all competition between them." The court cites cases of which it says: "The determining circumstances in all of them seems to have been a combination or conspiracy among a number of persons, engaged in a particular business, to stifle or prevent competition and thereby to enhance or diminish prices to a point above or below what they would have been if left to the influence of unrestrained competition," and says: "All such combinations are held to be contrary to public policy and the courts will therefore refuse to lend their aid to the enforcement of the contracts by which such combinations are sought to be effected."

From the nature of things, very seldom can trusts and trade combinations on the one hand or labor organizations on the other, secure the co-operation of all competitors; and those outside the combination or association are a constant menace, whom the parties on the inside usually seek to coerce in whatever manner may appear effectual. This is the source of much litigation, and is the danger ground of the strike and boycott, to which are. applied precisely the same principles as those that control in trusts and combinations. The strike and boycott are of such importance in this discussion of labor combinations as to require somewhat extended treatment.

The law encyclopedia says: "The term strike is applied commonly to a combined effort on the part of a body of workmen employed by the same master to enforce a demand for higher wages, shorter hours or some other concession by stopping work in a body at a prearranged time and refusing to resume work until the demanded concession shall be granted." The attempt of laboring men when on a strike to prevent others from taking their places has been so frequent that it has given rise to many decisions which have more or less clearly defined the rights of the strikers in the premises. One in sympathy with a strike may argue with one who is about to take his place, or who has taken his place, and try to persuade the latter that he would best serve his own interests and the interests of his fellow men if he refused to work and aided in making the strike effectual; but such argument and persuasion must not be accompanied by circumstances and such a showing as will amount to intimidation.

The general and prolonged labor trouble on the various railroads in 1894 gave rise to many instructive decisions relative to strikes, in many of which the courts discredited the strike and rendered decisions against the railway employees. From a legal standpoint the struggle was unfortunate for the laborer. As conducted by Eugene V. Debs, and the American Railway

Union, it was wrong in principle and could not succeed in law. The decisions of the courts were therefore favorable to the railroads. The strike of 1894 was fought out in the courts on the legality of the sympathetic strike, and the sympathetic strike lost. No other results ought to have been expected from a legal standpoint. As we have previously seen the workmen on the various railroads had the right to quit their employment as individuals, although their quitting was in the nature of a boycott, and was for the purpose of coercing the railroads to help them in their fight against the Pullman company. The law could not inquire into their motive as long as they acted as units, but they passed out of the realm of individual action and confederated to act as a union. As a confederating body they were without the immunity granted them as individuals. Right here the strike of 1894 failed and left the labor unions demoralized by an inevitable defeat.

The law will not, if it can help it, tolerate indirection or allow damages to be done on the excuse that it indirectly will be an advantage in competition. The labor unions were doing that which was injuring the railroads. It was incumbent upon them to show that their action in thus doing what would injure capital and inconvenience the public, was justified by some reasonable excuse. Their excuse was an indirect one. Employees of the Pullman company were on a strike for higher wages. The various railroads throughout the country were carrying Pullman cars under contract. Employees of the railroads entered into the strike, not because of their own wages, or to better their condition. Helping another body of employees in their struggle is too remote a reason for inflicting the damage to the railroads and the public that was necessarily contemplated. There was no element of legitimate competition, such as an attempt to secure their own higher wages. That this position was taken by the courts is indicated in the decisions in cases growing out of the strike.

In one of the cases it was said: "All the employees 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. "In the celebrated case against Eugene V. Debs, when carried to the Supreme Court, while the court would not grant relief to Debs, who was sentenced to imprisonment, Justice Brewer, in the course of a lengthy opinion, said

specifically: "The right of any laborer, or any number of laborers, to quit work was not challenged."

In the heated conflict of the railway strike of 1894, where new phases of legal action were developing, and where it was necessary to cope with aggravated conditions, under the stress and hurry that usually attends cases requiring an injunction, some of the courts overstepped their rightful bounds. Judge Jenkins, during that time, in the United States Circuit Court, took the position in passing on the right of employees to quit service of a railroad that "one has not the right arbitrarily to quit service without regard to the necessities of that service," and held that "the duties of an employee of a public corporation are such that he cannot choose his own time for quitting the service," and held that the right of employees of a railroad "as the right of bondholders and shareholders are subordinate to the rights of the public and must yield to the public welfare." This was a case where the employees of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, operated by its receivers, had threatened to strike, if their wages were reduced, as contemplated by the receivers. An injunction was granted whereby such employees were enjoined from doing many things, such as disabling engines, interfering by force, and threats with those who desired to continue in the employment, and were also restrained "from combining and conspiring to quit with or without notice the service of said receivers with the object and intent of crippling the property in their custody, or embarrassing the operation of said railroad, and from so quitting the service of said receivers, with or without notice, as to cripple the property or to prevent or hinder the operation of said railroad." In other words, they were enjoined from striking to prevent a reduction of their wages. In his discussion, he says: "This part of the motion presents the issue whether a strike is lawful. "A strike is essentially a conspiracy to extort "I know of no peaceable strike; I think no strike was ever heard of that was or could be successful unaccompanied by intimidation and violence. "The strike has become a serious evil, destructive to property, destructive to individual rights, injurious to the conspirators themselves and subversive of republican institutions." "Whatever other doctrine may be asserted by reckless agitators, it must ever remain the duty of the courts, in the protection of society, and in the execution of the laws of the land, to condemn, prevent and punish all such unlawful conspiracies and combinations." This opinion was not upheld, but it contains an element of truth that can not well be disregarded. The higher court did not take this view of

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