Popular Law-making: A study of the origin, history, and present tendencies of law-making by statuteStimson, Frederic Jesup
History
Popular Law-making: A study of the origin, history, and present tendencies of law-making by statute
Stimson, Frederic Jesup
Legislation -- United States
of Property Act of 1875, as to industrial disputes only, in England;
and it is just as true that it would be unconstitutional in this
country, both under the Federal and State constitutions. Yet the
agitation for this revolution in the common law has been successful in
Maryland, California, and Oklahoma, though, as has been said, it does
not appear that any cases have yet been tried where the exception was
pleaded in defence, still less where the statute has been sustained as
constitutional.
[Footnote 1: "The position cited by Chitty from Hawkins, by way
of summing up the result of the cases, is this: 'In a word, all
confederacies wrongfully to prejudice another are misdemeanors at
common law, whether the intention is to injure his property, his
person, or his character.' And Chitty adds that 'the object of
conspiracy is not confined to an immediate wrong to individuals; it
may be to injure public trade, to affect public health, to violate
public police, to insult public justice, or to do any act in itself
illegal (3 Chit. Crim. Law, 1139)." Quoted by Shaw, Chief Justice of
Massachusetts, in Commonwealth _v_. Hunt (4 Mete. Illinois), printed
as a Senate Document in the 57th Congress, 1st session (Mass.) III.]
It is to be noted that the original English Act of 1875 only did away
with the criminal liability and left the victims of the boycott or
blacklist free to sue the combination for damages; but by the "Trade
Disputes Act," 6 Edward 7, chapter 47 (December 21, 1906) the
following paragraph was added:
"An act done in pursuance of an agreement or combination by two or
more persons shall, if done in contemplation or furtherance of a trade
dispute, not be actionable unless the act, if done without any such
agreement or combination, would be actionable."
And also a clause as to picketing:
"It shall be lawful for one _or more[1]_ persons, acting on their own
behalf or on behalf of a trade-union or of an individual employer or
firm in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute, to attend at
or near a house or place where a person resides or works or carries on
business or happens to be, if they so attend merely for the purpose of
peacefully obtaining or communicating information, or of peacefully
persuading any person to work or to abstain from working."
[Footnote 1: The italics are our own.]
And another upon inducing the breaking of contracts, loss of service:
"An act done by a person in contemplation or furtherance of a trade
dispute shall not be actionable on the ground only that it induces
some other person to break a contract of employment or that it is an
interference with the trade, business, or employment of some other
person, or with the right of some other person to dispose of his
capital or his labor as he wills."
Furthermore, after the Taff Vale case, trades-unions were exempted
from all liability:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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