of his family, and patrol his immediate premises to meet and anticipate an apprehended attack, not forgetting the rights of his peaceful neighbors. When the property endangered embraces a large field of operations, as a colliery, the posting of an armed patrol may be a necessary precaution.

Sections 72 and 73 on page 484 of the Digest of Pennsylvania of 1895 (see post, pp. 1021, 1022), relieving certain labor combinations. from the legal stigma of conspiracy, were construed by the courts of this State in two decisions in cases arising out of strikes, and the following show the points of the decisions:

Since the passage of these sections members of trades unions who engage in a strike and notify other members to strike can not be held for a conspiracy unless they hinder the others from working by using force, threats, or menaces. Where a committee from a trade union visits a place where members of a union are working and notifies those members that the demand of the union has been refused by their employers and the workmen must therefore quit work, such notice is not a hindering of the others from working as would make the committee liable to be held for conspiracy. (Court of quarter sessions, Philadelphia, Pa., 1881, Commonwealth ex rel. Vallette e. Sheriff, 15 Phil. Reports, 393.)

A court of equity has jurisdiction to enjoin the commission of unlawful acts where the rights are clear and the injury irreparable. A man's business is property and may be protected against injury by unlawful acts tending to injure or destroy it. The fact that the acts complained of may be the subject of criminal prosecution does not oust equitable jurisdiction to prevent private injury. A bill in equity alleged that a number of persons had combined to proscribe the plaintiff's business by "boycotting" him and requesting others to do so; by threatening the parties dealing with him that they will, in turn, be "boycotted or proscribed; and by following his wagons through the streets with requests to the public to "boycott" him; and, as a result of these acts plaintiff's business had fallen off greatly, and was threatened with entire destruction. Held, that a court of equity would enjoin the parties so conspiring to injure plaintiff from a continuance of these injurious and threatening acts. Held, further, that the acts complained of are not protected by these sections extending the rights of workingmen. The object of this legislation was to relieve from criminal penalties, but did not make the acts lawful. (Court of common pleas No. 1, Allegheny County, 1888, Brace Bros. v. Evans et al., 5 Pa. County Court Reports, 163.)

In the case of Bradley v. Pierson (24 Atlantic Reporter, 65), a decision was rendered in a suit brought to recover damages for blacklisting by one of the courts of this State, and the right to such damages was denied. The syllabus of the opinion in the case reads as follows:

Four employees of defendants asked for an increase of wages, and, on its being refused, left work. Defendants were members of a manufacturers association, the by-laws of which provided that when any hands employed by the members should be on a strike, either for wages or disagreement, no member should employ them after receiving due

notice thereof, and addressed a circular letter to the other members, giving the names of such employees, and requesting that they should not be employed until the trouble was settled. Plaintiff, one of said employees, failed to get work for a month, and brought an action against defendants for damages. It appeared that plaintiff and the other employees were members of a union, and that the union paid them while they were out of employment. Held, that a nonsuit was properly granted.

That certain acts of strikers and their sympathizers, where force, intimidation, etc., are used, may amount to treason to the State is shown in the charge to the grand jury delivered by the court of over and terminer of Allegheny County, Pa., in 1892, in the case known as the Homestead case. (12 Pa. County Court Reports, 97.) The following is taken therefrom:

A mere mob, collected upon the impulse of the moment, without any definite object beyond the gratification of its sudden passions, does not commit treason, although it destroys property and takes human life. When a large number of men arm and organize themselves by divisions and companies, appoint officers, and engage in a common purpose to defy the law, to resist its officers, and to deprive any portion of their fellow-citizens of the rights to which they are entitled under the constitution and the laws, it is a levying of war against the State, and the offense is treason. Much more so when the functions of the State government are usurped in a particular locality, the process of the Commonwealth and the lawful acts of its officers resisted, and unlawful arrests made at the dictation of a body of men who have assumed the functions of government in that locality. It is a state of war when a business plant has to be surrounded by the army of the State for weeks to protect it from unlawful violence at the hands of men formerly employed in it. Where a body of men have organized for a treasonable purpose, every step taken is an overt act of treason in levying war. Every member of a usurping government who has participated in such usurpation has committed treason. The design of overthrowing the government of the State need not extend to every portion of its territory. It is sufficient if it be to overturn it in a particular locality, and such intent may be inferred from the acts committed. Aliens domiciled within the State and who enjoy its protection owe temporary allegiance to it, and are amenable for treason. There are no accessories in treason; all are principals The relation of employer and employed is one of contract merely; neither party has the right to coerce the other into the making of a contract to which his mind does not assent. The aggregate rights of a large number rise no higher than the rights of individuals. Labor associations are legal so long only as they act peaceably and respect the rights of others. They may refuse to work and persuade others to join them in such refusal, but no more. They can not lawfully control the works in which their members have been employed or prevent by violence, or threats of violence, others from going to work. A citizen has the undoubted right to protect his property, and for this purpose may lawfully employ as many men as he sees proper, and may arm them. if necessary.

The supreme court of Pennsylvania in 1893, in the case of Murdock, Kerr & Co. v. Walker et al. (159 Pa. State Reports, 595), decided the issuance of an injunction to be proper when strikers gathered about their former place of employment and by the use of threats, intimidation, etc., endeavored to constrain other workmen to leave their employment. The sense of its opinion is shown in the following:

A court of equity will restrain by injunction discharged employees, members of a union, from gathering about their former employer's place of business, and from following the workmen whom he has employed in place of the defendants, from gathering about the boarding houses of such workmen, and from interfering with them by threats, menaces, intimidation, ridicule and annoyance on account of their working for the plaintiffs.

In a case growing out of a strike a bill for injunction and damages was filed in the court of common pleas of Fayette County, Pa., by one Margeret O'Neil, doing business as the Fayette City Coal Works, against Noah Behanna and others. There was a decree for the defendants, on the report of a master in chancery, and the plaintiff appealed the case to the supreme court of the State, which rendered its decision July 15, 1897, and reversed the decision of the lower court. Said case is reported on page 843, of volume 37, Atlantic Reporter, under the title of O'Neil. Behanna et al. The following is a quotation from the opinion of the supreme court and sufficiently states the facts in the

case:

We are obliged to differ wholly from the view of the facts reported by the learned master. It is totally irreconcilable with the testimony, read in the light of experience and a knowledge of human nature. Nor can we agree entirely with the view of the court below, though it is more in accordance with the evidence and the law. The learned judge, in his opinion, says: "The testimony establishes the fact that certain of the defendants overstepped these bounds, and used annoyance, intimidation, ridicule, and coercion to prevent new men from engaging in work for he plaintiff. When the new men were followed, and importuned not to work, from their point of embarkation to their destination, and there met by the strikers in considerable numbers, and followed to their lodging places, all the time being pressed and entreated to return, and called 'scabs' and 'blacklegs,' and sometimes surrounded, and the effort made to pull them away, and an unfriendly (at least) atmosphere about everywhere, it must be admitted that there was something more than mere argument and persuasion and the orderly and legitimate conduct of a strike. This was certainly serious annoyance, and well calculated to intimidate and coerce; and that effect was apparently produced on more than one occasion. Nor did such acts entirely end when the men imported actually began work, but such men were on occasions, and in a less public manner, approached in a like manner in their intervals of labor, and advised that there would be trouble there and they had better leave. No actual violence, however, was employed."

This is a mild and judicially restrained statement of what the eridence clearly showed. The strikers and their counsel seem to think that the former could do anything to attain their ends, short of actual physical violence. This is a most serious misconception. The "arguments" and "persuasion" and "appeals" of a hostile and demonstrative mob have a potency over men of ordinary nerve which far exceeds the limits of lawfulness. The display of force, though none is actually used, is intimidation, and as much unlawful as violence itself.

It is further urged that the strikers, through their committees, only exercised (insisted on" is the phrase their counsel use in this court) their right to talk to the new men, to persuade them not to go to work. There was no such right. These men were there presumably under contract with the plaintiff, and certainly in search of work, if not yet actually under pay. They were not at leisure, and their time, whether their own or their employer's, could not lawfully be taken up and their progress interfered with by these or any other outsiders, on any pretense or under any claim of right to argue or persuade them to break their contracts. Even, therefore, if the arguments and persuasion had been confined to lawful means, they were exerted at an improper time, and were an interference with the plaintiff's rights, which made the perpetrators liable for any damages the plaintiff suffered in consequence. But, in fact, their efforts were not confined to lawful means. The result of the evidence, as stated by the learned judge, is that the new men were "followed and importuned not to work, from their point of embarkation to their destination, and there met by the strikers in considerable numbers, called 'scabs' and 'blacklegs, ' and sometimes surrounded and the effort made to pull them away. This view is quite sufficiently favorable to the defendants, and, as already said, a hostile and threatening crowd does not need to resort to actual violence to be guilty of unlawful intimidation. The acts of these defendants were an unlawful interference with the rights of the new men, and with those of the plaintiff.

* * *

In Cote v. Murphy (159 Pa. Stat., 420, 28 Atl., 190), it is said by our brother dean that it is one of the indefeasible rights of a mechanic or laborer in this Commonwealth to fix such value on his services as he sees proper, and under the constitution there is no power lodged anywhere to compel him to work for less than he chooses to accept," nor, as the same right may be stated with reference to this case, to prevent his working for such pay as he can get and is willing to accept. We regard the testimony as demonstrating that the defendants were guilty of an unlawful combination, which, while professing the intention and trying to maintain an outward appearance of lawfulness, was carried out by violent and threatening conduct, which was equally a violation of the rights of the new men who came to work for plaintiff, and of the plaintiff herself, and that they are liable in this suit for all the damages which plaintiff suffered thereby.

VERMONT.

The sufficiency of an indictment found under sections 4226 and 4227 of the Revised Laws of Vermont of 1880 (now secs. 5041 and 5042 of the Statutes of Vermont of 1894, see post, p. 1029) prohibiting the use of threats, intimidation, etc., for the purpose of preventing the employ

ment of any person, was upheld by the supreme court of this State in 1887, in the case of State v. Stewart et al. (59 Vt., 273). The synopsis of the opinion delivered by the court reads as follows.

The labor and skill of the workman, the plant of the manufacturer, and the equipment of the farmer are in equal sense property; every man has the right to employ his talents, industry, and capital as he pleases, free from the dictation of others; and if two or more persons combine to coerce his choice in this behalf it is a criminal conspiracy, whether the means employed are actual violence or a species of intimidation that works upon the mind. A count is sufficient which charges that the respondents unlawfully combined, conspired and agreed together to prevent and hinder by violence, threats and intimidation the Ryegate Granite Works from retaining and taking into its employ certain workmen. A count is sufficient which charges that the respondents, with malicious intent to control and iniure said company, unlawfully conspired to terrify, intimidate, and drive away by threats its workmen. A count is sufficient which merely charges a conspiracy to do an unlawful act and a fortiori one that charges a conspiracy to do an unlawful act by unlawful means; thus these sections prescribe the punishment for using threats or intimidation to prevent a person accepting or continuing an employment in a mill, etc. The count charged that the respondents conspired with intent to prevent a prosecution of the business of said granite works and threatened its workmen that they were "scab shops," that the employees were "scabs," that their names would be published in the "scab" list in the Granite Cutters' Journal, that they would be shunned and disgraced in the craft, etc.; and that thereby they were frightened and driven away: Held, that said count charged a conspiracy to do an act unlawful at common law, by means unlawful under these sections, and that it sufficiently sets out an offense under these sections. The "boycott" is not the remedy to adjust the differences between capital and labor.

VIRGINIA.

In the case of Commonwealth v. Sheldon (11 Va. Law Journal, 324), a demurrer to an indictment for conspiracy to boycott was overruled. The syllabus of the decision therein was obtained from a source which did not give the date of the decision or the court rendering the same. It reads as follows:

A demurrer to an indictment for a conspiracy to boycott was overruled, and the court here said: "From the nature of this offense no comprehensive rule can be laid down which shall include all instances of it; but the authorities seem to agree that the gist of the offense is the conspiracy, and that a conspiracy is a confederacy to do an unlawful act, or a lawful act by unlawful means, whether to the prejudice of an individual or the public. But by unlawful' it is not intended to mean that the acts agreed to be done must be criminal; it is enough if they are wrongful and done with an improper or evil intent. Thus it has been held that threats, intimidation, or any forcible means, other than lawful competition, are unlawful. To threaten another in order to deter him from doing some lawful act, or to compel him to do an