the court finds the complaint charged the accused in a proper manner with the offense named."

The case of State v. Glidden et al. (55 Conn., 46) was held to come within the provisions of section 1518 of the General Statutes of Connecticut of 1888, prohibiting the use of intimidation, etc. (see post, p. 994), by a decision of the State supreme court of errors in 1887. The syllabus of said decision reads as follows:

The defendants conspired to intimidate the publishers of a certain newspaper called the Journal and Courier, to compel them to discharge against their will certain of their workmen and to employ the defendants and such persons as they should name. Held to fall within the prohibition of this section. The defendants' purpose was to deprive the publishing company of its liberty to carry on its business in its own way, although in doing so it interfered with no right of the defendants. The motive was to gain an advantage unjustly and at the expense of others, and therefore the act was legally corrupt. As a means of accomplishing the purpose the parties intended to harm the publishing company, and therefore it was malicious. It was also a crime for the defendants to seek to injure other workmen of the publishing company by depriving them of their employment. These workmen had just as good a right to work for the publishing company as the defendants had, and their right is entitled to the same consideration and protection. The defendants attempted not merely to injure the publishing company, but all persons who should patronize that company by subscribing for their paper or advertising in it. Held, that such conduct must be regarded as prima facie malicious and corrupt. If two or more persons combine to commit a crime or misdemeanor, such combination is itself a crime. And when the end sought is in itself lawful, a combination to use criminal means to accomplish it is a crime.

GEORGIA.

Act No. 779 of the acts of this State of 1890-91, requiring certain corporations to give to their discharged employees causes of their discharges in writing, was declared unconstitutional by the supreme court of the State in a decision rendered in 1894 in the case of Wallace v. Georgia, Carolina and Northern Ry. Co. This statute has not been included in the Code of Georgia of 1895, presumably because of this decision, but it was substantially the same in principle as secs. 1875, 1876, and 1877 of the Civil Code of 1895 and sec. 130 of the Penal Code of 1895 (see post, pp. 997, 999). The following is from the syllabus of the case, reported in 22 Southeastern Reporter, page 579:

The public, whether as many or one, whether as a multitude or as a sovereignty, has no interest to be protected or promoted by a correspondence between discharged agents or employees and their late employers, designed, not for public, but for private information as to the reasons for discharges, and as to the import and authorship of all complaints or communications which produced or suggested them. A statute which undertakes to make it the duty of incorporated railroad, express, and telegraph companies to engage in correspondence of this sort with their discharged agents and employees, and which subjects

them in each case to a heavy forfeiture, under the name of damages. for failing or refusing to do so, is violative of the general private right of silence enjoyed in this State by all persons, natural or artificial. from time immemorial, and is utterly void, and of no effect. · Liberty of speech and of writing is secured by the constitution, and incident thereto is the correlative liberty of silence, not less important nor less sacred. Statements or communications, oral or written, wanted for private information, can not be coerced by mere legislative mandate at the will of one of the parties and against the will of the other. Compulsory private discovery, even from corporations, enforced, not by suit or action, but by statutory terror, is not allowable where rights are under the guardianship of due process of law. It follows from the foregoing that the act of October 21, 1891, entitled "An act to require certain corporations to give to their discharged employees or agents the causes of their removal or discharge when discharged or removed," is unconstitutional, and that an action founded thereon for the recovery of $5,000 as penalty or arbitrary damages fixed by the statute for noncompliance with its mandate can not be supported.

ILLINOIS.

The case of People v. Davis et al., reported in the Chicago Legal News, Vol. XXX, No. 26, page 212, was heard in the criminal court of Cook County, Ill., upon a motion to quash an indictment for criminal conspiracy. Said indictment was found under section 46 of chapter 38 of the Revised Statutes of Illinois of 1891, now section 96 of chapter 38 of the Revised Statutes of Illinois of 1896 (see post, p. 1001), a statute defining and penalizing conspiracy to boycott, blacklist, etc. The indictment charged that the defendants were members of a certain union, viz, the Hoisting Engineers' Association; that two workmen, Charles and Dennis, were in the employ of the Thomas Elevator Company; that the defendants unlawfully conspired and agreed together, with the fraudulent and malicious intent to wrongfully and wickedly injure the business of Charles and Dennis, by unlawfully demanding of said elevator company the discharge of Charles and Dennis because they were not members of the Hoisting Engineers' Association, and then to "call off" certain engineers in the employ of the elevator company who were members of the association if the demand was not complied with, "for the purpose then and there of stopping the work of said Thomas Elevator Company, and thus throw said Charles and Dennis out of their employment." The indictment then avers the execution of said agreement, demand, refusal, and "calling off" of the union engineers by defendants, and that thereby the work of the elevator company was stopped, and by reason thereof Charles and Dennis were discharged from their employment. It did not allege that any contract of employment for any period existed either between the elevator company and the union engineers or between that company and Charles and Dennis.

As a result of a hearing the motion to quash was allowed in a decision

of the court rendered February 11, 1898, and the presiding judge, in delivering his opinion, used the following language:

To constitute an offense under the provisions of section 46, above quoted, there must be the agreement, with the fraudulent or malicious intent, "wrongfully and wickedly" to injure the business or employment, etc., of another. The agreement with the fraudulent or malicious intent to injure is not enough. The agreement must include the purpose to carry into execution the fraudulent and malicious intent to injure "wrongfully and wickedly;" that is, by the use of wrongful and wicked means. It may be that an indictment in the words of the statute charging that the defendants did conspire and agree together with the fraudulent and malicious intent wrongfully and wickedly to injure Charles and Dennis in their employment would be sufficient, but in this indictment there is a precise statement of the means agreed upon by the defendants to be used to carry into effect their alleged malicious intent to injure Charles and Dennis in their employment; and hence, if the means so alleged to have been agreed upon are in law wrongful and wicked, the indictment well and sufficiently charges a conspiracy under the statute. And, on the other hand, if the measures so set out in the indictment are not wrongful and wicked, the indictment can not be held well and sufficiently to charge a conspiracy under the statute, for, if the means which the indictment alleges were agreed upon to be used are not wrongful and wicked, in no just sense can the indictment be held to charge a conspiracy and agreement by the defendants with the fraudulent and malicious intent, "wrongfully and wickedly" to injure Charles and Dennis.

The words "wrongfully and wickedly" in the statute are to be understood as meaning the use of things in themselves "wrongful and wicked," independently of combination. We can not say that the means are wrongful and wicked, because of the agreement to use such means to carry out a malicious intent to injure. The thing prohibited is an agreement with the malicious intent wrongfully and wickedly to injure. Whether such intent exists depends upon the means agreed upon to be used to carry out the malicious intent to injure. To say that the means agreed upon are wrongful and wicked because of the agreement to use such means to carry out the malicious intent to injure, amounts to saying that the means receive a character of wrongfulness and wickedness from the agreement to use such means in a manner which depends for its own wrongfulness and wickedness upon the means so agreed upon.

I shall not attempt to define the words "wrongfully or wickedly" as used in the statute. It is sufficient to say that in cases like this where there is no suggestion of fraud, immorality, injury to the public, or violation of contract, there must at least be a civil wrong, and invasion of the civil rights of another, carrying with the liability to repair the natural and direct consequences, where injury results to the person whose rights are infringed or invaded. If the acts which the indictment alleges the defendants agreed together to do to compass the discharge of Charles and Dennis with the malicious intent to injure them constitute an actionable civil wrong, they must be regarded as wrongful and wicked in law, and if they do not amount to a civil wrong and are not criminal, they can not be regarded as wrongful and wicked in law.

There is no suggestion, even in the indictment, that the agreement into which it is alleged the defendants entered, contemplated the use of force, falsehood, or any other act of itself unlawful, and in my opinion it follows that the acts which the indictment alleges the defendants agreed to do, the means they agreed to use, can not be held in law wrongful or wicked. The views here expressed find confirmation in the provisions of our Criminal Code, section 158 [of chap. 38 of the Revised Statues of Illinois of 1891; now section 294 of the Revised Statutes of Illinois of 1896, see post, p. 1001], for under well-settled rules of construction it is but reasonable to infer that the legislature in adopting section 158 as a section of the act of which section 46 was another section, intended to embody in section 158 all matter in relation to interference by combination and agreement between employee and employer, between capital and industry, which it was thought proper to make the subject of a special criminal law.

One Mary G. Hennessy brought suit by an action on the case in an inferior court of Illinois against Abram F. Doremus and others, officers and promoters of the Chicago Laundrymen's Association, to recover damages for acts of theirs which tended to break up her business of conducting a laundry. Judgment was rendered in her favor, and the case finally came before the supreme court of the State, which, in its decision rendered October 24, 1898, affirmed the action of the lower court. This case is to be found on page 924, of volume 52, of the Northeastern Reporter, under the title of Doremus et al. v. Hennessy. The evidence showed that the appellee, Hennessy, instituted an action on the case, alleging that in 1890, and several years prior thereto, she was conducting a laundry office in the city of Chicago, where she received clothing from various customers, to be laundered; that she did not own a laundry plant herself, but employed other operating laundries, which, when the work was done, returned the same to her for delivery to her customers; that she had built up a good and profitable business; that appellants conspired to injure her in her good name and credit, and to destroy her business, because she would not increase the price charged by her to customers in accordance with the scale of prices fixed by an organization known as the Chicago Laundrymen's Association, and to that end willfully and unlawfully, by intimidation and unlawful inducements, caused parties who were doing her work (five of whom were mentioned in the declaration) to refuse to longer do the same, and by threats, intimidation, false representations, and unlawful inducements caused others who were operating laundries (who were specifically designated in a bill of particulars) to refuse to take or do her work; that this was done for no justifiable purpose, but to cause loss to the plaintiff and injure and destroy her business; that various persons with whom she had engagements to so do her work, in consequence of the acts of the appellants, broke their contracts with her, and the business she had built up as a laundry agent was destroyed and entirely broken up, and she thereby sustained great loss and dam

age by reason of appellants so contriving, plotting, and conspiring, by the means aforesaid, to break up and destroy her said business. In delivering the opinion of the supreme court, Judge Phillips spoke as follows:

The common law seeks to protect every person against the wrongful acts of others, whether committed alone or by combination, and an action may be had for injuries done which cause another loss in the enjoyment of any right or privilege or property. No persons, individually or by combination, have the right to directly or indirectly interfere with or disturb another in his lawful business or occupation, or to threaten to do so for the sake of compelling him to do some act, which, in his judgment, his own interest does not require. Losses willfully caused by another from motives of malice, to one who seeks to exercise and enjoy the fruits and advantages of his own enterprise, industry, skill and credit, will sustain an action. It is clear that it is unlawful and actionable for one man, from unlawful motives, to interfere with another's trade by fraud or misrepresentation, or by molesting his customers or those who would be customers, or by preventing others from working for him or causing them to leave his employ by fraud or misrepresentation or physical or moral intimidation or persuasion, with an intent to inflict an injury which causes loss. A conspiracy may, when accompanied by an overt act, create a liability, by reason of the fact that one or more conspirators may do an unlawful act which causes damage to another, by which all those engaged in the conspiracy for the accomplishment of the purpose for which the injury was done, and which was done in pursuance of the conspiracy, would be alike liable, whether actively engaged in causing the loss or not.

For acts illegally done in pursuance of such conspiracy, and consequent loss, a liability may exist against all of the conspirators. Appellants, and those persons who refused to do appellee's work. had each a separate and independent right to unite with the organization known as the Chicago Laundrymen's Association, but they had no right, separately or in the aggregate, with others, to insist that the appellee should do so, or to insist that appellee should make her scale of prices the same as that fixed by the association, and make her refusal to do this a pretext for destroying and breaking up her business. A combination by them to induce others not to deal with appellee or enter into contracts with her or do any further work for her was an actionable

wrong.

Every man has a right under the law, as between himself and others, to full freedom in disposing of his own labor or capital according to his own will, and anyone who invades that right without lawful cause or justification commits a legal wrong, and, if followed by an injury caused in consequence thereof, the one whose right is thus invaded has a legal ground of action for such wrong. Damage inflicted by fraud or misrepresentation, or by the use of intimidation, obstruction or molestation, with malicious motives, is without excuse, and actionable. Competition in trade, business or occupation, though resulting in loss, will not be restricted or discouraged, whether concerning property or personal service. Lawful competition that may injure the business of another, even though successfully directed to driving that other out of business, is not actionable. Nor would competition of one set LAB 1901- -56