and adjudged guilty of a conspiracy in restraint of trade, and punished" as provided.

Section 8966 provides that arrangements, etc., such as described in Section 10301, having like purpose, and all such arrangements, etc., "whereby and under the terms of which it is proposed, stipulated, provided, agreed or understood that any person, association of persons or corporations doing business in" the State, "shall deal in selling or offer for sale" in the State "any particular or specific article, product or commodity, and shall not during the continuance or existence of any such arrangement, deal in, sell, or offer for sale," in the State, "any competing article, product or commodity," are declared to be against public policy, unlawful and void; and any person offending "shall be deemed and adjudged guilty of a conspiracy to defraud, and be subject to the penalties" provided.

* * *

By Section 10304 of the Revised Statutes of 1909 it is provided that domestic offending corporations shall forfeit their charters and all or any part of their property as shall be adjudged by a court of competent jurisdiction, or be fined in lieu of the forfeiture of charters or of property.

Foreign offending corporations shall forfeit their right to do business in the State, with forfeiture also of property or, in lieu thereof, the payment of a fine.

In State vs. Standard Oil Co., 218 Mo. 1, 370, 372, the Supreme Court held that the anti-trust statutes of the State "are limited in their scope and operations to persons and corporations, dealing in commodities, and do not include combinations of persons engaged in labor pursuits." And, justifying the statutes against a charge of illegal discrimination, the court further said that "it must be borne in mind that the differentiation between labor and property is so great that they do not belong to the same general classification of rights, or things, and have never been so recognized by the common law or legislative enactments."

Accepting the construction put upon the statute, but contesting its legality as thus construed, plaintiff in error makes three contentions: (1) The statutes as so construed unreasonably and arbitrarily limit

the right of contracts; (2) discriminate between the vendors of commodities and the vendors of labor and services, and (3) between vendors and purchasers of commodities.

(1) The specification under this head is that the Supreme Court found, it is contended, benefit-not injury-to the public had resulted from the alleged combination. Granting that this is not an over-statement of the opinion the answer is immediate. It is too late in the day to assert against statutes which forbid combinations of competing companies that a particular combination was induced by good intention and has had some good effect. Armour Packing Co. vs. United States, 209 U. S. 56, 62: Standard Sanitary Mfg. Co. vs. United States, 226 U. S. 20, 49. The purpose of such statutes is to secure competition and preclude combinations which tend to defeat it. And such is explicitly the purpose and policy of the Missouri statutes; and they have been sustained by the Supreme Court. There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States which precludes a State from adopting and enforcing such policy. To so decide would be stepping backwards. Carroll vs. Greenwich Ins. Co., 199 U. S. 401; Central Lumber Co. vs. South Dakota, 226 U. S. 157.

It is true that the Supreme Court did not find a definite abuse of its powers by plaintiff in error, but it did find that there was an offending against the statute, a union of able competitors, and a cessation of their competition, and the court said: "Some of the smaller concerns that were competitors in the market, have ceased their struggle for existence and retired from the field." This is one of the results which the statute was intended to prevent, the unequal struggle of individual effort against the power of combination. The preventing of the engrossment of trade is as definitely the object of the law as is price regulation of commodities, its prohibition being against combinations "made with a view to lessen or which tend to lessen lawful trade or full and free competition in the importation, transportation. manufacture or sale of any commodity, or article or thing bought or sold." See

Standard Oil Co. vs. United States, 221 U. S. 1; United States vs. American Tobacco Co., Id. 106; United States v. Patten, 225 U. S. 525.

(2) and (3). These contentions may be considered together, both involving a charge of discrimination-the one because the law does not embrace vendors of labor, the other because it does not cover purchasers of commodities as well as vendors of them. Both, therefore, invoke a consideration of the power of classification which may be exerted in the legislation of the State. And we shall presently see that power has very broad range. A classification is not invalid because of simple inequality. We said in Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. Matthews, 174 U. S. 96, 106, by Mr. Justice Brewer, "The very idea of classification is that of inequality, so that it goes without saying that the fact of inequality in no manner determines the matter of constitutionality." Therefore, it may be there is restraint of competition in a combination of laborers and in a combination of purchasers, but that does not demonstrate that legislation which does not include either combination is illegal. Whether it would have been better policy to have made such comprehensive classification it is not our province to decide. In other words, whether a combination of wage earners or purchasers of commodities called for repression by law under the conditions in the State was for the legislature of the State to determine.

In Carroll v. Greenwich Ins. Co., supra, a statute of Iowa was considered which made it unlawful for two or more fire insurance companies doing business in the State, or their officers or agents, to make or enter into combinations or agreements in relation to the rates to be charged for insurance, and certain other matters. The provision was held invalid by the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Iowa on the ground of depriving of liberty of contract secured by the Fourteenth Amendment and of the equal protection of the laws. This court reversed the decision, saying after stating that there was a general statute of Iowa which prohibited combinations to fix the price of any

article of merchandise or commodity or to limit the quantity of the same produced or sold in the State, "Therefore, the act in question does little if anything more than apply and work out the policy of the general law in a particular case." Again, "If an evil is specially experienced in a particular branch of business, the Constitution embodies no prohibition of laws confined to the evil, or doctrinaire requirement that they should be couched in all-embracing terms." And, "If the legislature of the State of Iowa deems it desirable artificially to prevent, so far as it can, the substitution of combination for competition, this court can not say that fire insurance may not present so conspicuous an example of what the legislature thinks an evil as to justify special treatment. The imposition of a more specific liability upon life and health insurance companies was held valid in Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company v. Mettler, 185 U. S. 308." Other cases were also cited in illustration.

Carroll v. Greenwich Ins. Co., supra, is especially apposite. It contains the elements of the case at bar and a decision upon them. It will be observed that the statute, which it was said declared the general policy of Iowa, was a prohibition against a combination of producers and sellers. There was the same distinction, therefore, between vendors and purchasers of commodities as in the Missouri statute and the same omission of prohibition of combinations of vendors of labor and services as in the Missouri law. The distinction and omission were continued when the policy of the State was extended to insurance companies. The law was condemned because it went no fartherbecause it did not prohibit the combination of all trades, businesses and persons. We held that the omission was not for judicial cognizance, and that a court could not say that fire insurance might not present so conspicuous an example of what the legislature might think an evil "as to justify special treatment."

not

We might leave the discussion with that and the other cases. They decide that we are helped little in determining the legality of a legislative classification by making

broad generalizations, and it is for a broad generalization that the plaintiff in error contends-indeed, a generalization which includes all the activities and occupations of life, and there is an enumeration of wage earners in emphasis of the discrimination in which manufacturers and sellers are singled out from all others. The contention is deceptive, and yet it is earnestly urged in various ways which it would extend this opinion too much to detail. "In dealing with restraints of trade," it is said, "the proper basis of classification is obviously neither in commodities nor services, nor in persons, but in restraints." A law to be valid, therefore, is the inflexible deduction, can not distinguish between "restraints," but must apply to all restraints, whatever their degree or effect or purpose, and that because the Missouri statute has not this universal operation it offends against the equality required by the Fourteenth Amendment. This court has decided many times that a legislative classification does not have to possess such comprehensive extent.

Classification must be accommodated to the problems of legislation, and we decided in Ozan Lumber Co. v. Union County Bank, 207 U. S. 251, that it may depend upon degrees of evil without being arbitrary or unreasonable. We repeated the ruling in Heath & Milligan Manufacturing Co. v. Worst, Id. 338, in Engel v. O'Malley, 219 U. S. 128, in Mutual Loan Co. v. Martell, 222 U. S. 225, and again in German Alliance Insurance Company v. Lewis, 233 U. S. 389, 418. In the latter case a distinction was sustained against a charge of discrimination between stock fire insurance companies and farmers' mutual insurance companies insuring farm property. If this power of classification did not exist, to what straits legislation would be brought. We may illustrate by the examples furnished by plaintiff in error. In the enumeration of those who, it is contended, by combination are able to restrain trade are included, among others, "persons engaged in domestic service" and "nurses," and because these are not embraced in the law, plaintiff in error, it is contended, although a combination of companies uniting the power of

$120,000,000 and able thereby to engross 85 per cent or 90 per cent of the trade in agricultural implements, is nevertheless beyond the competency of the legislature to prohibit. As great as the contrast is, a greater one may be made. Under the principle applied a combination of all the great industrial enterprises (and why not railroads as well?) could not be condemned unless the law applied as well to a combination of maid-servants or to infants' nurses, whose humble functions preclude effective combination. Such contrasts and the considerations they suggest must be pushed aside by government, and a rigid and universal classification applied, is the contention of the plaintiff in error; and to this the contention must come. Admit exceptions and you admit the power of the legislature to select them. But it may be said the comparison of extremes is forensic, and, it may be fallacious; that there may be powerful labor combinations as well as powerful industrial combinations, and weak ones of both, and that the law to be valid can not distinguish between strong and weak offenders. This may be granted (Engel v. O'Malley, supra), but the comparisons are not without value in estimating the contentions of plaintiff in error. The foundation of our decision is, of course, the power of classification which a legislature may exercise, and cases we have cited, as well as others which may be cited, demonstrate that some latitude must be allowed to the legislative judgment in selecting the "basis of community." We have said that it must be palpable arbitrary to authorize a judicial review of it, and that it can not be disturbed by the courts "unless they can see clearly that there is no fair reason for the law that would not require with equal force its extension to others whom it leaves untouched." Mo., Kan. & Tex. Ry. Co. v. May, 194 U. S. 267, 269; Williams v. State of Ark., 217 U. S. 79, 90; Watson v. State of Maryland, 218 U. S. 173, 179.

The instances of these cases are instructive. In the first there was a difference made between land owners as to liability for permitting certain noxious grasses to go to seed on the lands. In the second,

the statute passed on made a difference between business in the solicitation of patronage on railroad trains and at depots. In the third a difference based on the evidence of qualification of physicians was declared valid.

In Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Milling Co., 218 U. S. 406, a distinction was made between common carriers in the power to limit liability for negligence. In Engel v. O'Malley, supra, a distinction between bankers was sustained; and in Provident Savings Institution v. Malone, 221 U. S. 660, deposits in savings banks were distinguished from deposits in other banks in the application of the statute of limitations.

Other cases might be cited whose instances illustrate the same principle and in which this court has refused to accept the higher generalizations urged as necessary to the fulfillment of the constitutional guaranty of the equal protection of the law, and in which we, in effect, held that it is competent for a legislature to determine upon what differences a distinction may be made for the purpose of statutory classification between objects otherwise having resemblances. Such power, of course, can not be arbitrarily exercised. The distinction made must have reasonable basis. Magoun v. Illinois Trust &c. Banks, 170 U. S. 283; Clark v. Kansas City, 176 U. S. 114; Gundling v. Chicago, 177 U. S. 183; Petit v. Minnesota, 177 U. S. 164; Williams v. Fears, 179 U. S. 270; American Sugar Refining Co. v. Louisiana, 179 U. S. 89; Griffith v. Connecticut, 218 U. S. 563; Chicago, R. I. & Pac. Ry. Co., 219 U. S. 453, 466; Lindsay v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co., 220 U. S. 61, 79; Fifth Avenue Coach Co. v. New York, 221 U. S. 467; Murphy v. California, 225 U. S. 623; Rosenthal v. New York, 226 U. S. 269, 270; Mo. Kan. & Tex. Ry. v. Cade, 233, U. S.

And so in the case at bar. Whether the Missouri statute should have set its condemnation on restraints generally, prohibiting combined action for any purpose and to everybody, or confined it as the statute does to manufacturers and vendors of articles and permitting it to purchasers of such articles; prohibiting it to sellers

of commodities and permitting it to sellers of services, was a matter of legislative judgment and we can not say that the distinctions made are palpably arbitrary, which we have seen is the condition of judicial review. It is to be remembered that the question presented is of the power of the legislature, not the policy of the exercise of the power. To be able to find fault, therefore, with such policy is not to establish the invalidity of the law based upon it.

It is said that the statute as construed by the Supreme Court of the State comes within our ruling in Connelly v. Union Sewer Pipe Co., 184 U. S. 540, but we do not think so. If it did we should, of course, apply that ruling here. Judgment affirmed.

MASSACHUSETTS ANTI-INJUNCTION

T

BILL.

HE State Senate of Massachusetts has passed the anti-injunction bill, favored by the Massachusetts branch of the A. F. of L., and the trade unionists of that State have won a most pronounced victory. The House had previously passed the bill, which is now before Governor Walsh, who has informed the unionists that unless something unforeseen turns up he will sign the bill, and that should anything arise that would cause him to hesitate in signing it, he will, before taking action, notify the workers in order that they may be heard on the matter.

The bill revoluntionizes the relations of employers and employes in Massachusetts, as it provides that henceforth the right to do business and the right to perform services is a personal right and not a property right.

It also ends the practice of issuing injunctions on the plea of injury. The law provides that recourse must be made to the courts in a regular manner, unless irreparable injury is threatened.

The bill in full follows:

An act to make lawful certain agreements between employes and laborers, and to limit the issuing of injunctions in certain

cases.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court as

sembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

Section 1. It shall not be unlawful for persons employed or seeking employment to enter into any arrangements, agreements or combinations with a view of lessening the hours of labor or of increasing their wages or bettering their condition; and no restraining order or injunction shall be granted by any court of the commonwealth of Massachusetts or by any judge thereof in any case between an employer and employes, or between employers and employes, or between persons employed and persons seeking employment, of involving or growing out of a dispute concerning terms or conditions of employment, or any act or acts done in pursuance thereof, unless said injunction be necessary to prevent irreparable injury to property or to a property right of the party making the application, for which there is no adequate remedy at law; and such property or property right must be particularly described in the application, which must be sworn to by the applicant or by his agent or attorney.

In construing this act, the right to enter into the relation of employer and employe, to change that relation, and to assume and create a new relation for employer and employe, and to perform and carry on business in such relation with any person in any place, or to do work and labor as an employe, shall be held and construed to be a personal and not a. property right. In all cases involving the violation of the contract of employment by either the employe or employer where no irreparable damage is about to be committed upon the property or property right of either, no injunction shall be granted, but the parties shall be left to their remedy at law.

Sec. 2. No person or persons who are employed or seeking employment or other labor shall be indicted, tried, or prosecuted in any court of the commonwealth of Massachusetts for entering into any arrangements, agreements or combinations between themselves as such employes or laborers, made with a view of lessening the number of hours of labor or increasing their wages or bettering their condition, and for any act done in pursuance thereof unless such act is in itself unlawful.

T

THE PRIZE CONTEST.

HE following are extracts from acknowledgments received of the prizes sent out in the 1913 prize contest for securing new members:

G. R. Hook, of Division 6: "Received watch today. It's a dandy and muchly appreciated. Thanks."

W. R. Miller, of Division 8: "Watch received this p. m. O. K. It is so far superior to anything I had in mind that I can not find words to express my feelings. I am delighted with it."

F. P. Fraleigh, of Division 8: "I received the watch O. K. yesterday, and wish to thank you for it. It certainly is a beauty, and any telegrapher should be proud to wear such a time-piece. I feel that I have been more than paid for my work last year, and it will be a pleasure for me to show the boys on my division that the Grand Division appreciates the work of the membership when they award such beautiful prizes."

W. V. Bidwell, of Division 8: "I received the watch, for which I wish to thank you and the Grand Division. I am more than pleased with it. It is certainly a very fine watch and one that anyone could be proud of."

R. M. Gordon, of Division 16: "I am very pleased to inform you that my watch arrived this morning. To merely say that I am pleased with the watch would be putting it very mildly, for it is far above my expectations and is certainly a beauty."

C. R. Elliott, of Division 17: "I beg to acknowledge receipt of my watch this date, and to say the least I was agreeably surprised and delighted and prize it highly."

J. P. Neale, of Division 31: "The watch received this morning, and to say that I am delighted does not half express my feeling. It is certainly a beauty. Many thanks for the same. You will always find me in the harness, working for the good of the Order."

H. O. Irwin, of Division 40: "I am just in receipt of the handsome watch you sent