(41 Sup.Ct.) blacklisted as "scabs" if they assisted in installing the presses; threatening an exposition company with a strike if it permitted complainant's presses to be exhibited; and resorting to a variety of other modes of preventing the sale of presses of complainant's manufacture in or about New York City, and delivery of them in interstate commerce, such as injuring and threatening to injure complainant's customers and prospective cus464 which the International Association also is to interfere with the hauling and installaa party, having the object of compelling com- tion of presses, and thus bring pressure to plainant to unionize its factory and enforce bear upon the customers; notifying repair the "closed shop," the eight-hour day, and the shops not to do repair work on Duplex pressunion scale of wages, by means of interferinges; coercing union men, by threatening with and restraining its interstate trade in them with loss of union cards and with being the products of the factory. Complainant's principal manufacture is newspaper presses of large size and complicated mechanism, varying in weight from 10,000 to 100,000 pounds, and requiring a considerable force of labor and a considerable expenditure of time a week or more to handle, haul, and erect them at the point of delivery. These presses are sold throughout the United States and in foreign countries; and, as they are especially designed for the production of daily papers, there is a large market for them in and about the city of New York. They are delivered there in the ordinary course of interstate commerce; the handling, hauling, and installation work at destination being done by employees of the purchaser under the supervision of a specially skilled machinist supplied by complainant. The acts complained of and sought to be restrained have nothing to do with the conduct or manage ment of the factory in Michigan, but solely with the installation and operation of the presses by complainant's customers. None of the defendants is or ever was an employee of complainant, and complainant at no time has had relations with either of the organizations that they represent. In August, 1913 (eight months before the filing of the bill), the International Association called a strike at 463 tomers, and persons concerned *in hauling. handling, or installing the presses. In some cases the threats were undisguised; in other cases polite in form, but none the less sinister in purpose and effect. All the judges of the Circuit Court of Appeals concurred in the view that defendants' conduct consisted essentially of efforts to render it impossible for complainant to carry on any commerce in printing presses between Michigan and New York and that defendants had agreed to do and were endeavoring to accomplish the very thing pronounced unlawful by this court in Loewe v. Lawlor, 208 U. S. 274, 28 Sup. Ct. 301, 52 L. Ed. 488, 13 Ann. Cas. 815, and Lawlor v. Loewe, 235 U. S. 522, 35 Sup. Ct. 170, 59 L. Ed. 341. The judges also agreed that the interference with interstate commerce was such as ought to be enjoined, unless the Clayton Act of October 15, 1914, forbade such injunction. [1] That act was passed after the beginning of the suit, but more than two years before it was brought to hearing. We are clear that the courts below were right in giving complainant's factory in Battle Creek, as a result of which union machinists to the member of about 11 in the factory and 3 who supervised the erection of presses in the field left complainant's employ. But the defection of so small a number did not materially in-effect to it; the real question being whether terfere with the operation of the factory, and sales and shipments in interstate commerce continued. they gave it the proper effect. In so far as the act (a) provided for relief by injunction to private suitors, (b) imposed conditions upon granting such relief under particular circumstances, and (c) otherwise modified the Sherman Act, it was effective from the time of its passage, and applicable to pending suits for injunction. Obviously, this form of relief operates only in futuro, and the right to it must be determined as of the time of the hearing. State of Pennsylvania Wheeling & Belmont Bridge Co., 18 How. 421, 431, 432, 15 L. Ed. 435. See, also, United States v. Schooner Peggy, 1 Cranch, 103, 110, 2 L. Ed. 49; Sampeyreac v. United States, v. The acts complained of made up the details of an elaborate programme adopted and carried out by defendants and their organizations in and about the city of New York as part of a country-wide programme adopted by the International Association, for the purpose of enforcing a boycott of complainant's product. The acts embraced the following, with others: Warning customers that it would be better for them not to purchase, or, having purchased, not to install, presses made by complainant, and threatening them with loss should they do so; threatening 7 Pet. 222, 239, 240, 8 L. Ed. 665; Mills v. customers with sympathetic strikes in other trades; notifying a trucking company, usually employed by customers to haul the presses, not to do so, and threatening it with trouble if it should; inciting employees of the trucking company, and other men employed by customers of complainant, to strike against their respective employers in order Green, 159 U. S. 651, 653, 16 Sup. Ct. 132, 40 The Clayton Act, in section 1 (Comp. St. § 8835a), includes the Sherman Act in a definition of "anti-trust laws," and in section 16 (38 Stat. 737 [section 88350]) gives to private, pective, in order to cause them to withhold parties a right to relief by injunction in any or withdraw patronage from complainant court of the United States against threatened through fear of loss or damage to themselves should they deal with it. *465 [5] As we shall see, the recognized distinction between a primary and a secondary boycott is material to be considered upon the question of the proper construction of the Clayton Act. But, in determining the right to an injunction under that and the Sherman Act, it is of minor consequence whether either kind of boycott is lawful or unlawful at common law or under the statutes of par loss or damage by a violation of the antitrust laws, under the conditions and principles regulating the granting of such relief by courts of equity. Evidently this provision was intended to supplement the Sherman Act, under which some of the federal courts had held, as this court afterwards held in Paine Lumber Co. v. Neal, 244 U. S. 459, 471, 37 Sup. Ct. 718, 61 L. Ed. 1256, that a private party could not maintain a suit for injuncticular states. Those acts, passed in the ex tion. [2] That complainant's business of manufacturing printing presses and disposing of them in commerce is a property right, entitled to protection against unlawful injury or in terference; that unrestrained access to the channels of interstate commerce is necessary for the successful conduct of the business; that a widespread combination exists, to which defendants and the associations represented by them are parties, to hinder and obstruct complainant's interstate trade and commerce by the means that have been indicated; and that as a result of it complainant has sustained substantial damage to its interstate trade, and is threatened with further and irreparable loss and damage in the future is proved by clear and undisputed evidence. Hence the right to an injunction is clear if the threatened loss is due to a violation of the Sherman Act as amended by the Clayton Act. [3] Looking first to the former act, the thing declared illegal by its first section (26 Stat. 209 [Comp. St. § 8820]) is: “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." The accepted definition of a conspiracy is a combination of two or more persons by concerted action to accomplish a criminal or unlawful purpose, or to accomplish some purpose not in itself criminal or unlawful by criminal or unlawful means. Pettibone v. United States, 148 U. S. 197, 203, 13 Sup. Ct. 542, 37 L. Ed. 419. If the purpose be unlawful, it may not be carried out, even by means that otherwise would be legal; and, although the purpose be lawful, it may not be carried out by criminal or unlawful means. *466 ercise of the power of Congress to regulate commerce among the states, are of paramount authority, and their prohibitions must be given full effect, irrespective of whether the things prohibited are lawful or unlawful at common law or under local statutes. Ct. 301, 52 L. Ed. 488, 13 Ann. Cas. 815, where In Loewe v. Lawlor, 208 U. S. 274, 28 Sup. there was an effort to compel plaintiffs to unionize their factory by preventing them from manufacturing articles intended for transportation beyond the state, and also by preventing vendees from reselling articles purchased from plaintiffs and negotiating with plaintiffs for further purchases, by means of a boycott of plaintiffs' products and of dealers who handled them, this court held that there was a conspiracy in restraint of trade actionable under section 7 of the *Sherman Act (section 8829), and in that connecL. Ed. 488, 13 Ann. Cas. 815): tion said (208 U. S. 293, 28 Sup. Ct. 303, 52 *467 "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 when the case came before the court a second time, 235 U. S. 522, 534, 35 Sup. Ct. 170, 59 L. Ed. 341, it was held that the use of the primary and secondary boycott and the circulation of a list of "unfair dealers," intended to influence customers of plaintiffs and thus subdue the latter to the demands of the defendants, and having the effect of interfering with plaintiffs' interstate trade, was actionable. [4] The substance of the matters here comIn Eastern States Lumber Association v. plained of is an interference with complainant's interstate trade, intended to have co- United States, 234 U. S. 600, 34 Sup. Ct. ercive effect upon complainant, and produc- 951, 58 L. Ed. 1490, L. R. A. 1915A, 788, ed by what is commonly known as a "secon- wholesale dealers were subjected to coercion dary boycott"; that is, a combination not merely through the circulation among remerely to refrain from dealing with com- tailers, who were members of the association, plainant, or to advise or by peaceful means of information in the form of a kind of persuade complainant's customers to refrain "black list," intended to influence the re("primary boycott"), but to exercise coercive tailers to refrain from dealing with the listpressure upon such customers, actual or pros-ed wholesalers, and it was held that this (41 Sup.Ct.) constituted a violation of the Sherman Act. "That case establishes that, irrespective of compulsion or even agreement to observe its intimation, the circulation of a list of 'unfair dealers,' manifestly intended to put the ban upon those whose names appear therein, among an important body of possible customers combined with a view to joint action and in anticipation of such reports, is within the prohibitions of the Sherman Act if it is intended to restrain and restrains commerce among the states." suasion is as much within the *prohibition as one accomplished by force or threats of force; and it is not to be justified by the fact that the participants in the combination or conspiracy may have some object beneficial to themselves or their associates which possibly they might have been at liberty to pursue in the absence of the statute. [7] Upon the question whether the provisions of the Clayton Act forbade the grant of an injunction under the circumstances of the present case, the Circuit Court of Appeals was divided; the majority holding that under section 20, "perhaps in conjunction with section 6," there could be no injunction. These sections are set forth in the margin.1 Defendants seek to derive from them some *469 *authority for their conduct. As to section 6, it seems to us its principal importance in this discussion is for what it does not authorize, and for the limit it sets to the immunity conferred. The section assumes the normal objects of a labor organization to be legitimate, and declares that nothing in the anti-trust laws shall be construed to forbid the existence and operation of such organizations or to forbid their members from "Sec. 6. That the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. Nothing contained in the anti-trust laws shall be construed to forbid the existence and operation of labor, agricultural, or horticultural organizations, instituted for the purposes of mutual help, and not having capital stock or conducted for profit, or to forbid or restrain individual members of such organizations from lawfully carrying out the legitimate objects thereof; nor shall such organizations, or the members thereof, be held or construed to be illegal combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade, under the anti-trust laws." Section 88351. "Sec. 20. That no restraining order or injunction shall be granted by any court of the United States, or a judge or the judges thereof, in any case between an employer and employees, or between employers and employees, or between employees, or between persons employed and persons seeking employment, involving, or growing out of, a dispute concerning terms or conditions of employment, unless necessary to prevent irreparable injury to property, or to a property right, of the party making the application, for which injury there is no adequate remedy at law, and such property or property right must be described with particularity in the application, which must be in 41 SUP.CT.-12 lawfully carrying out their legitimate objects; and that such an organization shall not be held in itself-merely because of its existence and operation-to be an illegal combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade. But there is nothing in the section to exempt such an organization or its members from accountability where it or they depart from its normal and legitimate objects and engage in an actual combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade. And by no fair or permissible construction can it be taken as authorizing any activity otherwise unlawful, or enabling a normally lawful organization to become a cloak for an illegal combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade as defined by the anti-trust laws. $470 The principal reliance is upon section 20. This regulates the granting of restraining orders and injunctions by the courts of the United States in a designated class of cases, with respect to (a) the terms and conditions of the relief and the practice to be pursued, and (b) the character of *acts that are to be exempted from the restraint, and in the concluding words it declares (c) that none of the acts specified shall be held to be violations of any law of the United States. All its provisions are subject to a general qualification respecting the nature of the controversy and the parties affected. It is to be a "case between an employer and employees, or between employers and employees, or between employees, or between persons employed and persons seeking employment, involving, or growing out of, a dispute concerning terms or conditions of employment." [8, 9] The first paragraph merely puts into statutory form familiar restrictions upon the granting of injunctions already established and of general application in the equity practice of the courts of the United States. It is but declaratory of the law as it stood before. The second paragraph declares that writing and sworn to by the applicant or by his agent or attorney. "And no such restraining order or injunction shall prohibit any person or persons, whether singly or in concert, from terminating any relation of employment, or from ceasing to perform any work or labor or from recommending, advising, or persuading others by peaceful means so to do; or from attending at any place where any such perof peacefully obtaining or communicating inforson or persons may lawfully be, for the purpose mation, or from peacefully persuading any person to work or to abstain from working; or from ceasing to patronize or to employ any party to such dispute, or from recommending, advising, or persuading others by peaceful and lawful means to do; or from paying or giving to, or withholding from, any person engaged in such dispute, any strike benefits or other moneys or things of value; or from peaceably assembling in a lawful manner, and for lawful purposes; or from doing any act or thing which might lawfully be done in the absence of such dispute by any party thereto; nor shall any of the acts specified in this paragraph be considered or held to be violations of any law of the United States." Section 1243d. *472 "no such restraining order or injunction" [the nature of a special privilege or immunity shall prohibit certain conduct specified to a particular class, with corresponding manifestly still referring to a “case between | detriment to the general public; and it would an employer and employees, in- violate rules of statutory construction havvolving, or growing out of, a dispute con- ing general application and far-reaching im cerning terms or condition of employment," portance to enlarge that special privilege by as designated in the first paragraph. It is very clear that the restriction upon the use of the injunction is in favor only of those concerned as parties to such a dispute as is described. The words defining the permitted conduct include particular qualifications consistent with the general one respecting the nature of the case and dispute intended; and the concluding words, "nor shall any of the acts specified in this paragraph be considered or held to be violations of any law of the United States," are to be read in the light of the context, and mean only that those acts are not to be so held when com mitted by parties concerned in "a dispute concerning terms or conditions of employment." If the qualifying words are to have any effect, they must operate to confine the restriction upon the granting of injunctions, *471 resorting to a loose construction of *the section, not to speak of ignoring or slighting the qualifying words that are found in it. Full and fair effect will be given to every word if the exceptional privilege be confined-as the natural meaning of the words confines it-to those who are proximately and substantially concerned as parties to an actual dispute respecting the terms or conditions of their own employment, past, present, or prospective. The extensive construction adopted by the majority of the court below virtually ignores the effect of the qualifying words. Congress had in mind particular industrial controversies, not a general class war. "Terms or conditions of employment" are the only grounds of dispute recognized as adequate to bring into play the exemptions; and it would do violence to the guarded language employed were the exemption extended beyond the parties affected in a proximate and substantial, not merely a sentimental or sympathetic, sense by the and also the relaxation of the provisions of [11] Nor can section 20 be regarded as The majority of the Circuit Court of Ap- bringing in all members of a labor organizapeals appear to have entertained the view tion as parties to a "dispute concerning that the words "employers and employees," terms or conditions of employment," which as used in section 20, should be treated as proximately affects only a few of them, with referring to "the business class or clan to the result of conferring upon any and all which the parties litigant respectively be- members-no matter how many thousands long," and that, as there had been a dis- there may be, nor how remote from the pute at complainant's factory in Michigan actual conflict-those exemptions which Conconcerning the conditions of employment gress in terms conferred only upon parties there a dispute created, it is said, if it did to the dispute. That would enlarge by connot exist before, by the act of the Machinists' struction the provisions of section 20, which Union in calling a strike at the factory-sec- contain no mention of labor organizations, tion 20 operated to permit members of the so as to produce an inconsistency with secMachinists' Union elsewhere, some 60,000 in tion 6, which deals specifically with the subnumber, although standing in no relation of ject and must be deemed to express the measemployment under complainant, past, pres-ure and limit of the immunity intended by ent, or prospective, to make that dispute Congress to be incident to mere membership their own and proceed to instigate sym- in such an organization. At the same time pathetic strikes, picketing, and boycotting it would virtually repeal by implication the against employers wholly unconnected with prohibition of the Sherman Act, so far as complainant's factory and having relations labor organizations are concerned, notwithwith complainant only in the way of pur- standing repeals by implication are not favchasing its product in the ordinary course of interstate commerce, and this where there was no dispute between such employers and their employees respecting terms or conditions of employment. *473 ored, and in effect, as *was noted in Loews v. Lawlor, 208 U. S. 274, 303, 304, 28 Sup. Ct. 301, 52 L. Ed. 488, 13 Ann. Cas. 815, would confer upon voluntary associations of individuals formed within the states a control over commerce among the states that is denied to the governments of the states themselves. [10] We deem this construction altogether inadmissible. Section 20 must be given full effect according to its terms as an expression of the purpose of Congress; but it must be borne in mind that the section imposes an [12] The qualifying effect of the words de exceptional and extraordinary restriction up-|scriptive of the nature of the dispute and the on the equity powers of the courts of the parties concerned is further borne out by United States and upon the general opera- the phrases defining the conduct that is no! tion of the anti-trust laws, a restriction in to be subjected to injunction or treated as a (41 Sup.Ct.) violation of the laws of the United States, that is to say: ment, (a) "Terminating any relation of employor persuading others by peaceful means so to do;" (b) "attending at any place where any such person or persons may lawfully be, for the purpose of peacefully obtaining or communicating information, or from peacefully persuading any person to work or to abstain from working;" (c) "ceasing to patronize or to employ any party to such dispute, * recommending, advising, or persuading others by peaceful and lawful means so to do;" (d) "paying or giving to, or withholding from, any person engaged in such dispute, any strike benefits; (e) "doing any act or thing which might lawfully be done in the absence of such dispute by any party thereto." or The emphasis placed on the words "lawful" and "lawfully," "peaceful" and "peacefully," and the references to the dispute and the parties to it, strongly rebut a legislative intent to confer a general immunity for conduct violative of the anti-trust laws, or otherwise unlawful. The subject of the boycott is dealt with specifically in the "ceasing to patronize" provision, and by the clear force of the language employed the exemption is limited to pressure exerted upon a "party to such dispute" by means of "peaceful and lawful" influence upon neutrals. There is nothing here to justify defendants or the organizations they represent in using either threats or persuasion to bring about strikes *474 or a cessation of work on the part of employees of complainant's customers or prospective customers, or of the trucking company employed by the customers, with the object of compelling such customers to withdraw or refrain from commercial relations with complainant, and of thereby constraining complainant to yield the matter in dispute. To instigate a sympathetic strike in aid of a secondary boycott cannot be deemed "peaceful and lawful" persuasion. In essence it is a threat to inflict damage upon the immediate employer, between whom and his employees no dispute exists, in order to bring him against his will into a concerted plan to inflict damage upon another employer who is in dispute with his employees. The majority of the Circuit Court of Appeals, very properly treating the case as involving a secondary boycott, based the decision upon the view that it was the purpose of section 20 to legalize the secondary boycott "at least in so far as it rests on or consists of refusing to work for any one who CharIdeals with the principal offender." acterizing the section as "blindly drawn," and conceding that the meaning attributed to it was broad, the court referred to the legislative history of the enactment as a warrant for the construction adopted. Let us consider this. [13, 14] By repeated decisions of this court it has come to be well established that the and motives of individual members are not a debates in Congress expressive of the views safe guide, and hence may not be resorted to, in ascertaining the meaning and purpose of the law-making body. Aldridge v. Williams, 3 How. 9, 24, 11 L. Ed. 469; United States v. Union Pacific R. R. Co., 91 U. S. 72, 79, 23 L. Ed. 224; United States v. Freight Association, 166 U. S. 290, 318, 17 Sup. Ct. 540, 41 L. Ed. 1007. But reports of committees of House or Senate stand upon a more solid footing, and may be regarded as an exposition of the legislative intent in a case where otherwise the meaning of a statute is obscure. Binns v. United States, $475 *194 U. S. 486, 495, 24 Sup. Ct. 816, 48 L. Ed. 1087. And this has been extended to include explanatory statements in the nature of a supplemental report made by the committee member in charge of a bill in course of passage. Binns v. United States, supra; Penna. R. R. Co. v. International Coal Co., 230 U. S. 184, 198-199, 33 Sup. Ct. 893, 57 L. Ed. 1446, Ann. Cas. 1915A, 315; United States v. Coca Cola Co., 241 U. S. 265, 281, 36 Sup. Ct. 573, 60 L. Ed. 995, Ann. Cas. 1917C, 487; United States v. St. Paul, M. & M. Ry. Co., 247 U. S. 310, 318, 38 Sup. Ct. 525, 62 L. Ed. 1130. [15] In the case of the Clayton Act, the printed committee reports are not explicit with respect to the meaning of the "ceasing to patronize" clause of what is now section 20. See House Rept. No. 627, 63d Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 33-36; Senate Rept. No. 698, 63 Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 29-31; the latter being a reproduction of the former. But they contain extracts from judicial opinions and a then recent text-book sustaining the "primary boycott," and expressing an adverse view as to the secondary or coercive boycott, and, on the whole, are far from manifesting a purpose to relax the prohibition against restraints of trade in favor of the secondary boycott. Moreover, the report was supplemented in this regard by the spokesman of the House committee (Mr. Webb) who had the bill in charge when it was under consideration by the House. The question whether the bill legalized the secondary boycott having been raised, it was emphatically and unequivocally answered by him in the negative. 2 The |