This course I pursue upon the advice of the legal counsel of the American Federation of Labor, as to the far-reaching character of the decision of the Supreme Court. This action is also advised by my colleagues of the Executive Council. I have no words adequate to express the regret I feel at being obliged to take this action, especially as in the opinion of competent lawyers-and their opinion is shared by many other laymen as well as myself-this decision by the Supreme Court is unwarranted and unjust, but until Congressional relief can be obtained it must undoubtedly be binding upon us all. Were it only myself personally who might suffer, for conscience sake I should not hesitate to risk every penalty, even unto the extreme, in defense of what I believe to be labor's rights. In this case of the adverse court decision, and indeed in every other circumstance which may arise, I think those who know me do not question my loyalty, devotion, and willingness to bear fully any responsibility involved in the forwarding of the cause to which my life is pledged; but unfortunately the terms of the decision are such that no one person, even though president of the American Federation of Labor and willing to assume entire responsibility, will be permitted to take upon himself the sole penalty of protest against what I and every member of every organization affiliated to the American Federation of Labor, and indeed every patriotic citizen, must feel to be a most sweeping drag-net decision making the natural and rational voluntary action of workmen unlawful and punishable by fine and imprisonment. Personal willingness to bear the penalty would avail nothing in this instance to spare the other men of labor and our organizations from the penalties decreed to them by the Supreme Court, in fact such an attempt on my part would involve a vast number of people who would be held equally responsible with me. I would fail in performing my duty, though it is a painful one, did I not point out that under this decision each and every officer and member of every labor organization becomes liable for any violation of the decision by any one, not only as to his organization but individually to the extent of whatever his possessions may be. I think our men of labor will agree with me that I have no right to expose them to the heavy penalty for disobedience under this decision of the Supreme Court. I will say briefly here, as I do more fully editorially, that while obeying the decision of the court I feel most deeply that never in the history of our country has there been so serious an invasion of the rights and liberties of our people. Under the court's construction of the Sherman law the voluntary and peaceful associations of labor that are organized for the uplifting of the workers, these unions I say, are made the greatest offenders under the anti-trust law. It is almost unbelieveable that our unions which perform so important a service in the interest of civilization and moral and material progress are to be accorded the treatment of malefactors. Yet the more carefully this decision is read the more absolutely clear does it become that our unions are to be penalized by it, as the most vicious of trusts were intended to be, yet the trusts still go unpunished. I have a strong hope that Congress will promptly take heed of the injustice that has been done the workers, and will so amend or modify the Sherman anti-trust law, that the labor unions will be restored to the exercise of the powers and rights guaranteed to all our citizens under the constitution. It is not conceivable that Congress will turn a deaf ear to the rightful demand of the workers of the country for relief from this most amazing decision, but until such time as relief is assured, I am compelled, for the safety of our men of labor, to obey literally the decision of the Supreme Court; but this situation created by the court must be met. It will be met. While abiding by this decision, I urge most strongly upon my fellowunionists everywhere to be more energetic than ever before in organizing the yet unorganized, in standing together, in uniting and federating for the common good. 1 Be more active than ever before in using every lawful and honorable means, not only to secure relief from the present situation at the hands of Congress, but in the doing of everything which may promote the uplifting and noble work of our great cause of humanity. Like all great causes it must meet temporary opposition, but in the end it will accomplish all the more on account of the trials endured. SAMUEL GOMPERS, President, American Federation of Labor. The Supreme Court on January 23rd, decided that clause in the Erdman act which provided that railroads might not discharge employes for belonging to a labor union was an interference with "freedom of contract." This means, in plain language, that corporations may have the freedom to blacklist men for being members of labor organizations. Mark the inconsistency of the Supreme Court. In the Hatters' case it declares that the boycott used by the workers is a conspiracy and punishable by heavy penalties. In the Adair case, brought under the Erdman act, it gives a decision which will permit employers to use the blacklist as freely as they please and the wage-workers will have no redress. Employers may use the blacklist, but wage-workers may not use the boycott. Both decisions are unjust to labor. The boycott concerns only the manipulation of material products. The blacklist is the denial of the opportunity for a man to work. To blacklist a man-deny him the right to labor-is to deny him the right to live. Humanity was shocked at the discovery of the Reconcentrado camps in Cuba where the Spanish penned in their victims to die by slow starvation, before the Spanish war, yet the blacklist erects as real a barrier-though invisible around the worker under its ban, and he is often equally condemned to the horrors of slow starvation for himself and his family. It must be remembered that the blacklisted man is often refused employment on any terms-and for what? Not that he is guilty of crime, but because he has associated with his fellows in a labor union. Much freedom of contract for the wage-workers forsooth under the operation of the blacklist! We hope this decree will prove so repugnant to the country that no employer will be tempted to use it under the shield of the Supreme Court decision. It is another case for Congressional relief. SUPREME COURT DECISION. DIETRICH Loewe ET AL. vs. MARTIN LAWLOR ET AL. [February 3, 1908.] On a writ of certiorari to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Mr. Chief Justice FULLER delivered the opinion of the Court: This was an action brought in the Circuit Court for the District of Connecticut under section seven of the anti-trust act of July 2, 1890, claiming threefold damages for injuries inflicted on plaintiffs by combination or conspiracy declared to be unlawful by the act. Defendants filed a demurrer to the complaint, assigning general and special grounds. The demurrer was sustained as to the first six paragraphs, which rested on the ground that the combination stated was not within the Sherman act, and this rendered it unnecessary to pass upon any other questions in the case; and, upon plaintiffs declining to amend their complaint, the court dismissed it with costs. 148 Fed. Rep., 924; and see 142 Fed. Rep., 216; 130 Fed. Rep., 633. The case was then carried by writ of error to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and that court, desiring the instruction of this court upon a question arising on the writ of error, certified that question to this court. The certificate consisted of a brief statement of facts, and put the question thus: "Upon this state of facts can plaintiffs maintain an action against defendants under section seven of the anti-trust act of July 2, 1890?" After the case on certificate had been docketed here plaintiffs in error applied, and defendants in error joined in the application, to this court to require the whole record and cause to be sent up for its consideration. The application was granted, and the whole record and cause being thus brought before this court it devolved upon the court, under section six of the judiciary act of 1891, to decide the whole matter in controversy in the same manner as if had been brought there for review by writ of error or appeal.' The case comes up, then, on complaint and demurrer, and we give the complaint in the margin. The question is whether upon the facts therein averred and admitted by the demurrer this action can be maintained under the anti-trust act. The first, second, and seventh sections of that act are as follows: 1. "Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any such contract or engage in any such combination or conspiracy, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments in the discretion of the court. 2. "Every person who shall monopolize, or at tempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several states, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court." 7. "Any person who shall be injured in his business or property by any other person or corporation by reason of anything forbidden or declared to be unlawful by this act, may sue therefor in any circuit court of the United States in the district in which the defendant resides or is found, without respect to the amount in controversy, and shall recover threefold the damages by him sustained, and the costs of suit, including a reasonable attorney's fee." In our opinion, the combination described in the declaration is a combination "in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states," in the sense in which those words are used in the act, and the action can be maintained accordingly. And that conclusion rests on many judgments of this court, to the effect that the act prohibits any combination whatever to secure action which essentially obstructs the free flow of commerce between the states, or restricts, in that regard, the liberty of a trader to engage in business. The combination charged falls within the class of restraints of trade aimed at compelling third parties and strangers involuntarily not to engage in the course of trade except on conditions that the combination imposes; and there is no doubt that (to quote from the well-known work of Chief Justice Erle on Trade Unions) "at common law every person has individually, and the public also has collectively, a right to require that the course of trade should be kept free from unreasonable obstruction." But the objection here is to the jurisdiction, because, even conceding that the declaration states a case good at common law, it is contended that it does not state one within the statute. Thus, it is said, that the restraint alleged would operate to entirely destroy defendants' business and thereby include intrastate trade as well; that physical obstruction is not alleged as contemplated; and that defendants are not themselves engaged in interstate trade. We think none of these objections are tenable, and that they are disposed of by previous decisions of this court. United States vs. Trans-Missouri Freight Association, 166 U. S., 290; United States vs. Joint Traffic Association, 171 U. S., 505, and Northern Securities Company vs. United States, 193 U. S., 197, hold in effect that the anti trust law has a broader application than the prohibition of restraints of trade unlawful at common law. Thus in the Trans-Missouri case it was said that, "assuming that agreements of this nature are not void at common law, and that the various cases cited by the learned courts below show it, the answer to the statement of their validity is to be found in the terms of the statute under consideration;" and in the Northern Securities case that "the act declares illegal every contract, combination, or conspiracy in whatever form, of whatever nature, and whoever may be the parties to it, which directly or necessarily operates in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states." We do not pause to comment on cases such as United States vs. Knight, 156 U. S.,1; Hopkins vs. United States, 171 U. S., 578; and Anderson vs. United States, Id. 604; in which the undisputed facts showed that the purpose of the agreement was not to obstruct or restrain interstate commerce. The object and intention of the combination determined its legality. In Swift vs. United States, 196 U. S., 395, a bill was brought against a number of corporations, firms and individuals of different states, alleging that they were engaged in interstate commerce in the purchase, sale, transportation and delivery, and subsequent resale at the point of delivery, of meats; and that they combined to refrain from bidding against each other in the purchase of cattle; to maintain a uniform price at which the meat should be sold; and to maintain uniform charges in delivering meats thus sold through the channels of interstate trade to the various dealers and consumers in other states. And that thus they artificially restrained commerce in fresh meats from the purchase and shipment of live stock from the plains to the final distribution of the meats to the consumers in the markets of the country. Mr. Justice Holmes, speaking for the court, said: "Commerce among the states is not a technical legal conception, but a practical one, drawn from the course of business. When cattle are sent for sale from a place in one state with the expectation that they will end their transit after purchase in another, and when in effect they do so, with only the interruption necessary to find a purchaser at the stock yards, and when this is a typical, constantly recurring course, the current thus existing is a current of commerce among the states, and the purchase of the cattle is a part and incident of such commerce. "The general objection is urged that the bill does not set forth sufficient definite or specific facts. This objection is serious, but it seems to us inherent in the nature of the case. The scheme alleged is so vast that it presents a new problem in pleading. If, as we must assume, the scheme is entertained, it is, of course, contrary to the very words of the statute. Its size makes the violation of the law more conspicuous, and yet the same thing makes it impossible to fasten the principal fact to a certain time and place. The elements, too, are so numerous and shifting, even the constituent parts alleged are and from their nature must be so extensive in time and space, that something of the same impossibility applies to them. "The scheme as a whole seems to us to be within reach of the law. The constituent elements, as we have stated them, are enough to give to the scheme a body and, for all that we can say, to accomplish it. Moreover, whatever we may think of them separately, when we take them up as distinct charges, they are alleged sufficiently as elements of a scheme. It is suggested that the several acts charged are lawful and that intent can make no difference. But they are bound together as parts of a single plan. The plan may make the parts unlawful." And the same principle was expressed in Aikens vs. Wisconsin, 195 U. Š., 194, involving a statute of Wisconsin prohibiting combinations "for the purpose of wilfully or maliciously injuring another in his reputation, trade, business, or profession by any means whatever," etc., in which Mr. Justice Holmes said: "The statute is directed against a series of acts, and acts of several, the acts of combining, with intent to do other acts. 'The very plot is an act in itself.' Mulcahy vs. The Queen, L. R., 3, H. L., 306, 317. But an act, which in itself is merely a voluntary muscular contraction, derives all its character from the consequences which will follow it under the circumstances in which it was done. When the acts consist of making a combination calculated to cause temporal damage, the power to punish such acts, when done maliciously, can not be denied because they are to be followed and worked out by conduct which might have been lawful if not preceded by the acts. No conduct has such an absolute privilege as to justify all possible schemes of which it may be a part. The most innocent and constitutionally protected of acts or omissions may be made a step in a criminal plot, and if it is a step in a plot neither its innocence nor the constitution is sufficient to prevent the punishment of the plot by law." In Addyston Pipe and Steel Company vs. United States 175 U. S., 211, the petition alleged that the defendants were practically the only manufacturers of cast iron within 36 states and territories, that they had entered into a combination by which they agreed not to compete with each other in the sale of pipe, and the territory through which the constituent companies could make sales was allotted between them. This court held that the agree ment which, prior to any act of transportation, limited the prices at which the pipe could be sold after transportation, was within the law. Mr. Justice Peckham delivering the opinion, said: "And when Congress has enacted a statute such as the one in question, any agreement or combination which directly operates not alone upon the manufacture but upon the sale, transportation, and delivery of an article of interstate commerce,' by preventing or restricting its sale, etc., thereby regulates interstate commerce. In Montague & Company vs. Lowry, 193 U. S. 38, which was an action brought by a private citizen under section 7 against a combination engaged in the manufacture of tiles, defendants were wholesale dealers in tiles in California and combined with manufacturers in other states to restrain the interstate traffic in tiles by refusing to sell any tiles to any wholesale dealer in California who was not a member of the association except at a prohibitive rate. The case was a commercial boycott against such dealers in California as would not or could not obtain membership in the association. The restraint did not consist in a physical obstruction of interstate commerce, but in the fact that the plaintiff and other independent dealers could not purchase their tiles from manufacturers in other states because such manufacturers had combined to boycott them. This court held that this obstruction to the purchase of tiles, a fact antecedent to physical transportation, was within the prohibition of the act. Mr. Justice Peckham, speaking for the court, said, concerning the agreement, that it "restrained trade, for it narrowed the market for the sale of tiles in California from the manufacturers and dealers therein in other states, so that they could only be sold to the members of the association, and it enhanced prices to the non-member." The averments here are that there was an existing interstate traffic between plaintiffs and citizens of other states, and that for the direct purpose of destroying such interstate traffic defendants combined not merely to prevent plaintiffs from manufacturing articles then and there intended for transportation beyond the state, but also to prevent the vendees from reselling the hats which they had imported from Connecticut, or from further negotiating with plaintiffs for the purchase and intertransportation of such hats from Connecticut to the various places of destination. So that, although some of the means whereby the interstate traffic was to be destroyed were acts within a state, and some of them were in themselves as a part of their obvious purpose and effect beyond the scope of federal authority, still, as we have seen, the acts must be considered as a whole, and the plan is open to condemnation, notwithstanding a negligible amount of intrastate business might be affected in carrying it out. If the purposes of the combination were, as alleged, to prevent any interstate transportation at all, the fact that the means operated at one end before physical transportation commenced and at the other end after the physical transportation ended was immaterial. Nor can the act in question be held inapplicable because defendants were not themselves engaged in interstate commerce. The act made no distinction between classes. It provided that "every" contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint of trade was illegal. The records of Congress show that several efforts were made to exempt by legislation organizations of farmers and laborers from the operation of the act, and that all these efforts failed, so that the act remained as we have it before us. In an early case, United States vs. Workingmen's Amalgamated Council, 54 Fed. Rep., 994, the United States filed a bill under the Sherman act in the Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, averring the existence of "a gigantic and widespread combination of the members of a multitude of separate organizations for the purpose of restraining the commerce among the several states and with foreign countries," and it was contended that the statute did not refer to combinations of laborers. But the court, granting the injunction, said: "I think the Congressional debates show that the statute had its origin in the evils of massed capital; but, when the Congress came to formulating the prohibition, which is the yardstick for measuring the complainant's right to the injunction, it expressed it in these words: 'Every con tract or combination in the form of trust, or otherwise in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal.' The subject had so broadened in the minds of the legislators that the source of the evil was not regarded as material, and the evil in its entirety is dealt with. They made the interdiction include combinations of labor, as well as of capital; in fact, all combinations in restraint of commerce, without reference to the character of the persons who entered into them. It is true this statute has not been much expounded by judges, but, as it seems to me, its meaning, as far as relates to the sort of combinations to which it is to apply, is manifest, and that it includes combinations which are composed of laborers acting in the interest of laborers." "It is the successful effort of the combination of the defendants to intimidate and overawe others who were at work in conducting or carrying on the commerce of the country, in which the court finds their error and their violation of the statute. One of the intended results of their combined action was the forced stagnation of all the commerce which flowed through New Orleans. This intent and combined action are none the less unlaw ful because they included in their scope the paralysis of all other business within the city as well." The case was affirmed on appeal by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. 57 Fed. Rep., 85. Subsequently came the litigation over the Pullman strike and the decisions In re Debs, 64 Fed. Rep., 724, 745, 755, 158 U. S., 564. The bill in that case was filed by the United States against the officers of the American Railway Union, which alleged that a labor dispute existed between the Pullman Palace Car Company and its employes; that thereafter the four officers of the railway union combined together and with others to compel an adjustment of such dispute by creating a boycott against the cars of the car company; that to make such boycott effective they had already prevented certain of the railroads running out of Chicago from operating their trains; that they asserted that they could and would tie up, paralyze, and break down any and every railroad which did not accede to their demands, and that the purpose and intention of the combination was "to secure unto themselves the entire control of the interstate, industrial and commercial business in which the population of the city of Chicago and of other communities along the lines of road of said railways are engaged with each other, and to restrain any and all other persons from any independent control or management of such interstate, industrial, or commercial enterprises, save according to the will and with the consent of the defendants." The circuit court proceeded principally upon the Sherman anti-trust law, and granted an injunction. In this court the case was rested upon the broader ground that the federal government had full power over interstate commerce and over the transmission of the mails, and in the exercise of those powers could remove everything put upon highways, natural or artificial, to obstruct the passage of interstate commerce or the carrying of the mails. But in reference to the anti-trust act the court expressly stated:, "We enter into no examination of the act of |