EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT employer, a building contractor, worked on another building where non-union men were employed by the owner, and the two recent cases in the Federal courts of California holding unlawful a labor-union boycott of a dealer by declaring him " unfair" because he employed non-union men. These decisions put under the ban some of the commonest practices of labor unions which say they violate fundamental principles of the law, viz., the right to strike and the right of peaceable persuasion, the one founded on the right of personal liberty and the other on the right of freedom of speech. In contrast with these and other decisions in this country the English "Trades and Disputes Act, " passed in 1906, does away with combina tion and interference with another in his trade, business or employment as grounds of liability when the act is done in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute. The expres sion " trade dispute" is given a broad meaning, so as to include cases in which the dispute is not with the employersof the striking workmen. Only Mr. Darling's summary of his argu ments can be given here. We believe the English position to be the more just and suited to the conditions of the times. "The right of servants at will to strike should be recognized as an absolute right subject to no limitations whatever, being merely an assertion of freedom of the person and, therefore, not subject to any restrictions depending on motive, combination or other circumstances. "The rule against interference or molesta tion should be regarded as a rule of limited rather than of general application. This for the reason that the parties, employers on the one side and workmen on the other, are engaged in a contest for advantage, for supremacy. From the right of workingmen to engage in such a contest it results that the disadvantages suffered by employers in conse quence thereof are not necessarily or presump tively actionable. The act which is complained of as constituting interference is usually refusing to deal with a person or persuading others to do so, the former an absolute right and the latter one which, if not so broad as the former, may be exercised under a great variety of circumtances, as shown by the discussion herein. In this contest the field
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of combat is a wide one and the contestants have a right to conduct their campaign accordingly. Acts which may advance their interests in a general or indirect way should be regarded as lawful no less than acts designed to gain direct advantages in a special instance. The opponents of the union would limit the contest to a form which may be likened to a duel, denying the right of a general engage ment or the employment of strategy, as when it is said that men have no right to strike to (to combine to strike, to state their contention more precisely) when they have no dispute with their employer. The Trade Disputes Act in this matter of interference, as in the matter of combination, has put the .matter on a juster basis. The apparent intention is to make the scope of the enactment as broad as the contest between employers and workmen generally, in contrast to limiting it to contests between an employer and his workmen in individual instances. It is enough if the act is done in pursuit of a trade advan tage, any trade advantage; it need not be an advantage over the person immediately affected." LEGISLATION. " Digest of Governors' Mes sages, 1907," N. Y. State Library, Albany, N. Y., I9o8. LEGISLATION. Report of Board of Statu tory Consolidation of the Legislature of the State of Xew York, J. B. Lyon and Co., Albany, 1908 (8 vols.) MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS. " May any Discretion be Exercised in the Issuance of Municipal Licenses? " by Wilmer T. Fox, Central Law Journal (V. Ixvi, p. 314). NEGOTIABLE INSTRUMENTS. (Effect of Seals). " The Conflict Between Xegotiable Instruments and Instruments Under Seal," by H. W. Humble, American Law Review (V. xlii, p. 263). A discussion of some of the charac teristics of sealed instruments and the over throw in modern times of the doctrine that a seal destroys negotiability. PARTNERSHIP. " The Indian Law of Partnership," by S. N. Roy, Bombay Law Reporter (V. x, p. 82). PATENT PRACTICE. " The Proposed Court of Patent Appeals," by Otto Raymond Barnett, Michigan Law Review (V. vi, p. 441). An exposition of the present unsatisfactory condi tion of our practice whereby the validity or
