Harvard Law Review/Volume 1/Issue 5/Reviews
REVIEWS.
The Law of Criminal Conspiracies and Agreements, as found in the American Cases. By Hampton L. Carson, of the Philadelphia bar; Text-book series, Vol. 1, No. 1. The Blackstone Publishing Company, Philadelphia, 1887, pp. 235.
This work is bound in the same volume with “Wright on Criminal Conspiracy,” and, unlike the others of the same series, is not a reprint. Mr. Carson’s work was originally intended, as he says, to illustrate Mr. Wright’s text “by reference to the American cases in the form of notes;” but he found so much material that he concluded to shape it into a distinct hand-book for the lawyer in active practice.
In view of the recent wide-spread labor disturbances, Mr. Carson’s section entitled, “Conspiracies Relating to the Rates of Wages—Strikes and Boycotts,” pages 144 to 179, will not be found the least interesting in the book. His conclusions from the cases cited, many of which are very recent, including The Old Dominion Steamship Co. v. McKenna, and State v. Glidden, is briefly as follows: Workmen may lawfully combine for many purposes, such as the raising of their wages, the prevention of overcrowding in their trade, etc. “The moment, however, that they proceed by threats, intimidation, violence, obstruction, or molestation, in order to secure their ends; or where their object be to impoverish third persons, or to extort money from their employers, or to ruin their business, or to encourage strikes or breaches of contract among others, or to restrict the freedom of others for the purpose of compelling employers to conform to their views, or to attempt to enforce rules upon those not members of their association, they render themselves liable to indictment.”
On the whole, Mr. Carson’s book seems to live up to the preface in a satisfactory manner. Its merit is rather as a hand-book of the latest decisions in criminal conspiracy, than as a very learned or scientific treatise on the subject.
B. G. D.