»tract question is then well agreed. A man has a right to deal with his fellows undis turbed. The intentional invasion of that busi ness right is a prima facie tort. If this was not so at bottom the law would be found in a crucial instance like this to furnish a most inadequate remedy against oppression; but if, on the other hand, one who interferes with the business of another is put to his justifica tion in every case, the law furnishes a com plete remedy, excusing no man who does not show his excuse. Chief Baron Palles, in his charge to the jury in the principal case under discussion— O'Keeffe т. Walsh—states this principle of law in this modern form: "That, gentlemen, is the general principle, and the general principle only. There is a freedom for the mind and will; there is a freedom to adopt one's own course ot life. There is a freedom to trade, a freedom to buy and sell, a freedom to buy land, a freedom to sell land, a liberty to deal in your own goods. This liberty is secured to every man in this country, and part of that for which we pay our taxes is that the government of this coun try shall enforce and protect this liberty. 'Wrongful' imports the infringement of some right. I have explained to you the right that the plaintiff has to deal freely in his trade without interference by combined action; and I must now tell you that if there be an inten tional interference in his trade by th? com bined action of the defendants which is not justifiable as an exercise of some correlative right of the defendants, that interference would be wrongful." What is the wrong, then—the legal wrong?; It is hard to state in a satisfactory manner, even after it is appreciated. The difficulty is this: Any one of these defendants separately might have refused to have any dealings whatever with the plaintiff; he might have re fused from whim, or caprice, or malice; and yet there would not be any legal wrong done by him. How, then, can it be a legal wrong
for several such to do in combination what any one of them might do himself without legal wrong? That is the paradox in the law as to the boycott. A case of boycott by organized labor that is worth mention in this discussion is Curran i: Galen, 152 N. Y. 33; the plaintiff demand ed damages of the defendants for having con federated together to injure him by taking away his means of earning a livelihood and preventing him from obtaining employment. He set forth tha', by an agreement between the Ale Brewers' Association of Rochester and the Brewery Workmen's Association all employés of the brewery companies should be members of the unions, and that by oper ation of this agreement his employers, the Miller Brewing Company, discharged him upon notice given to it by the union, the de fendants in this action. In the opinion of the court this was an ac tionable conspiracy: "The organization of the local assembly in question by the workingmen in the breweries of the city of Rochester may have been perfectly lawful in its general purposes and methods. . . . but so far as a purpose appears from the defence set up to the complaint that no employé of a brewing company shall be allowed to work for a longer period than four weeks, without becoming a member of the Workingmen's Local Assembly, and that a contract between ¡he local assembly and the Ale Brewers' As sociation shall be availed of to compel the discharge of the independent employé, it is, in effect, a threat to keep persons from work ing at the particular trade and to procure their dismissal from employment. While it may be true, as argued, that the contract was entered into, on the part of the Ale Brewers' Association, with the object of avoiding dis putes and conflicts with the workingmen's organization, that feature and such an inten tion cannot aid the defence, nor legalize a plan of compelling workingmen, not in affili ation with the organization, to join it, at the
