PITNEY, MCKENNA, and VAN DEVANTER, JJ., dissenting. 244 U. S. concerning conspiracies between railroads and elevator companies to prevent competition, seem to us very clearly not to have been intended to overrule the authority that we cite, and not to have any bearing on the present point. Decree affirmed. MR. JUSTICE PITNEY, with whom concurred MR. JUSTICE MCKENNA and MR. JUSTICE VAN DEVANTER, dissenting. Appellants, who were complainants below, filed their bill in the United States Circuit Court (afterwards District Court) in the month of February, 1911, to obtain an injunction against the prosecution of a conspiracy to restrain interstate trade and commerce in the products of complainants' woodworking mills and destroy their interstate business by means of a boycott. The federal jurisdiction was invoked both on the ground of diverse citizenship and on the ground that the action arose under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of July 2, 1890, c. 647, 26 Stat. 209. Upon the merits, the laws of the State of New York were relied upon, as well as the federal act. (General Business Law of N. Y., § 340; Penal Law of N. Y., § 580, subd. 6.) It was found by the District Court (212 Fed. Rep. 259, 263, 266) that the defendants were engaged in a combination directly restraining competition between manufacturers and operating to restrain interstate commerce, in violation of both federal and state acts. The Circuit Court of Appeals assumed this to be so (214 Fed. Rep. 82), and there is no serious dispute about it here. The District Court dismissed the bill, upon the ground that injunctive relief under either statute could be had only at the instance of the United States, or the State of New York, as the case might be, and therefore complainants could not have relief in this suit; citing National Fireproofing 244 U. S. PITNEY, MCKENNA, and VAN DEVANTER, JJ., dissenting. Co. v. Mason Builders' Association, 169 Fed. Rep. 259, 263. The Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decree upon the ground that defendants' acts were not malicious and not directed against the individual complainants personally, and hence relief by injunction could not be granted, irrespective of whether the particular combination in question was obnoxious either to the common law or to the statutes. This decision was rendered on April 7, 1914. In this court, the prevailing opinion is that, although the facts show a violation of the Sherman Act, a private person cannot maintain a suit for an injunction under its fourth section. I dissent from the view that complainants cannot maintain a suit for an injunction, and I do so not because of any express provision in the act authorizing such a suit, but because, in the absence of some provision to the contrary, the right to relief by injunction, where irreparable injury is threatened through a violation of property rights and there is no adequate remedy at law, rests upon settled principles of equity that were recognized in the constitutional grant of jurisdiction to the courts of the United States. I think complainants were entitled to an injunction also upon grounds of state law; but will confine what I have to say to the federal question. The proofs render it clear that defendants are engaged in a boycotting combination in restraint of interstate commerce prohibited by and actionable under the Sherman Law, on the authority of Montague & Co. v. Lowry, 193 U. S. 38, 44-48; Loewe v. Lawlor, 208 U. S. 274, 292, et seq.; Eastern States Retail Lumber Dealers' Assn. v. United States, 234 U. S. 600, 614; Lawlor v. Loewe, 235 U. S. 522, 534. The proof is clear also that the conspiracy is aimed at the property rights of complainants in particular; certainly that it is designed to injure directly and drive out of business a limited class of traders the socalled "non-union" woodworking mills-to which complainants belong; that complainants are sustaining direct PITNEY, MCKENNA, and VAN DEVANTER, JJ., dissenting. 244 U. S. and serious injury through the closing of the channels of interstate trade to their products, an injury quite different from that suffered by the public in general; and that it is a continuing injury not adequately remediable by the ordinary action at law or the action for treble damages under the Sherman Act, and hence is an irreparable injury in the sight of equity. That there is no particular animosity towards complainants as individuals-assuming it to be true-is, in my view, a matter of no consequence. If evidence of malice be necessary (and I do not think it is), this is only in the sense that malice consists in the intentional doing of an unlawful act, to the direct damage of another, without just cause or excuse. Brennan v. United Hatters, 73 N. J. L. 729, 744. Free access to the markets through unobstructed channels of commerce is the very breath of the life of such manufacturing establishments; and to say that complainants are not specially injured by the conduct of defendants seems to me to require that the eyes be closed to the evidence in the case and to the familiar facts of commerce. I do not understand either of the courts below to have held as matter of fact that complainants were not specially injured; but that the District Court (212 Fed. Rep. 267), while finding in fact that complainants were directly injured, reasoned (erroneously, as I think,) that it was not such special injury as was contemplated by certain New York decisions cited. Section 1 of the Sherman Act declares that every combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States or with foreign nations is illegal, and imposes a punishment of fine or imprisonment upon the guilty parties. It clearly recognizes, what is well known, that injury to other traders and competitors is the primary effect of such a combination. A right of action for damages by a party specially aggrieved would have followed by implication (Texas & Pacific Ry. Co. 244 U.S. PITNEY, MCKENNA, and VAN DEVANTER, JJ., dissenting. v. Rigsby, 241 U. S. 33, 39); and it was doubtless because treble damages were to be allowed that an express authorization of suit at law was included in the act. Section 7. The fourth section provides: "The several circuit courts of the United States are hereby invested with jurisdiction to prevent and restrain violations of this act; and it shall be the duty of the several district attorneys of the United States, in their respective districts, under the direction of the Attorney-General, to institute proceedings in equity to prevent and restrain such violations," etc. The act was designed to be highly remedial, so far as preventing restraints of trade and commerce is concerned, and the semi-colon in the sentence just quoted indicates, as I think, that the grant of jurisdiction was intended to be general, and that the following clause was intended to impose a special duty upon the district attorneys to resort to that jurisdiction whenever, in the discretion of the Attorney General, a public prosecution should seem to be called for. Nor is the omission of an express declaration that persons threatened with special injury through violations of the act may have relief by injunction, of particular significance. Declarations of that character are rarely met with in the legislation of Congress. The reason is not far to seek. By § 2 of Article III of the Constitution, the judicial power is made to extend to "all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States," etc. This had the effect of adopting equitable remedies in all cases arising under the Consti 'Section 16 of the so-called Clayton Act of October 15, 1914, c. 323, 38 Stat. 730, 737, contains such a provision; but this was inserted only because some of the federal courts had held-erroneously, as I think— that private parties could have no relief by injunction against threatened violations of the Sherman Act. These decisions will be discussed below. PITNEY, MCKENNA, and VAN DEVANTER, JJ., dissenting. 244 U. S. tution and laws of the United States where such remedies are appropriate. The federal courts, in exercising their jurisdiction, are not limited to the remedies existing in the courts of the respective States, but are to grant relief in equity according to the principles and practice of the equity jurisdiction as established in England. Robinson v. Campbell, 3 Wheat. 212, 221, 223; United States v. Howland, 4 Wheat. 108, 115; Irvine v. Marshall, 20 How. 558, 565. In United States v. Detroit Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 339, the court, by Mr. Justice Brewer, declared: "It is a mistake to suppose that for the determination of equities and equitable rights we must look only to the statutes of Congress. The principles of equity exist independently of and anterior to all Congressional legislation, and the statutes are either annunciations of those principles or limitations upon their application in particular cases." To speak accurately, it is not the statute that gives a right to relief in equity, but the fact that in the particular case the threatened effects of a continuing violation of the statute are such as only equitable process can prevent. The right to equitable relief does not depend upon the nature or source of the substantive right whose violation is threatened, but upon the consequences that will flow from its violation. As the court, by Mr. Justice Field, declared in Holland v. Challen, 110 U. S. 15, 25: "If the controversy be one in which a court of equity only can afford the relief prayed for, its jurisdiction is unaffected by the character of the questions involved." To take a familiar example: The Constitution of the United States does not declare in terms that infringements of the rights thereby secured may be prevented by injunction. Ordinarily they may not be. It is only where a threatened infringement will produce injury and damage for which the law can afford no remedy-such, for instance, as irreparable and continuing damage, or a |