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THE GREEN BAG
ployed. The fear of this lies at the bottom of all of our laws against conspiracy. VI At least it may be made a working hy pothesis that in unionizing we have the legal wrong of conspiracy. The light of the non union man may be said to be, to have his em ployment free from interference; the wrong of the union may then be said to lie in such interference by such a tortious method as conspiracy. This view of the matter is con sistent with the cases so far as the discus sion has progressed; but as might be ex pected now that we are nearing the border land between right and wrong, there will be found some conflict in the authorities that bear upon this issue. A case so extreme that almost all courts would agree upon it is Curran v. Galen, 152 N. Y. 33. It appeared that in Rochester there was an agreement between the Ale Brewers' Association and the Brewery workingmen's Assembly that no person not a member of the assembly should be retained in the employment of any member of the association. The plaintiff got employment in one of the breweries but declined to join the union. The Assembly thereupon noti fied the Association, and he was at once dis charged. His suit against the union was for conspiracy causing loss of employment; and it was held that action lay. The whole opinion of the Court of Appeals follows: "Per Cur. 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 gen eral purposes and methods and may, other wise, wield its power and influence usefully and justly, for all that appears. It is not for us to say, nor do we intend to intimate, to the contrary; but so far as a purpose ap pears from the defence set up to the com plaint that no employé of a brewing com pany shall be allowed to work for a longer period than four weeks, without becoming a member of the Workingmen's Local Assem
bly, and that a contract between the local assembly and the Ale Brewers' Association shall be availed of to compel the discharge of the independent employé, it is, in effect, a threat to keep persons from working at the particular trade and to procure their dis missal from employment. While it may be true, as argued, that the contract was en tered 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 in tention cannot aid the defence, nor legalize a plan of compelling workingmen, not in affiliation with the organization, to join it, at the peril of being deprived of their em ployment and of the means of making a livelihood." Plant v. Woods, 176 Mass. 492 shows one of the latest developments in this general problem. This was a case of a contest for supremacy between two labor unions of the same craft, having substantially the same constitution and by-laws. The chief differ ence between them was that the plaintiff union was affiliated with a national organiza tion having its headquarters in Lafayette, Ind., while the defendant union was affili ated with a similar organization having its headquarters in Baltimore, Md. The plain tiff union was composed of workmen who in 1897 withdrew from the defendant union. The contest became active early in the fall of 1898. In September of that year, the members of the defendant union declared "all painters not affiliated with the Balti more headquarters to be non-union men," and voted to "notify the bosses" of that declaration. This action was for an in junction to prevent threats being made in pursuance of this vote. Mr Justice Hammond stated the follow ing as the reasons of the court for confirm ing the injunction against the defendants: "It is to be observed that this is not a case between the employer and employed, or, to use a hackneyed expression, between capi tal and labor, but between laborers all of
