delivered the opinion of the court.
This was a suit in equity brought by appellant in the District Court for the Southern District of New York for an injunction to restrain a course of conduct carried on by defendants in that District and vicinity in maintaining a boycott against the products of complainant’s factory, in furtherance of a conspiracy to injure and destroy its good will, trade, and business — especially to obstruct and destroy its interstate trade. There was also a prayer for damages, but this has not been pressed and calls for no further mention. Complainant is a Michigan corporation and manufactures printing presses at a factory in Battle Creek, in that State, employing about 200 machinists in the factory in addition to 50 office-employees, traveling salesmen, and expert machinists or road men who supervise the erection of the presses for complainant’s customers at their various places of business. The defendants who were brought into court and answered the bill are Emil J. Deering and William Bramley, sued individually and as business agents and representatives of District No. 15 of the International Association of Machinists, and Michael T. Neyland, sued individually and as business agent and representative of Local Lodge No. 328 of the same association. The Dis
The jurisdiction of the federal court was invoked both by reason of diverse citizenship and on the ground that defendants were engaged in a conspiracy to restrain complainant’s interstate trade and commerce in printing presses, contrary to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of July 2,1890, c. 647, 26 Stat. 209. The suit was begun before but brought to hearing after the passage of the Clayton Act of October 15, 1914, c. 323, 38 Stat. 730. Both parties invoked the provisions of the latter act, and both courts treated them as applicable. Complainant relied also upon the common law; but we shall deal first with the effect of the acts of Congress.
The facts of the case and the nature of the relief prayed are sufficiently set forth in the report of the decision of the Circuit Court of Appeals, 252 Fed. Rep. 722. The case was heard before Circuit Judges Rogers and' Hough and District Judge Learned Hand. Judge Rogers, although in the minority, stated the case and the pleadings for the court (pp. 723-727) and-delivered an opinion for reversal in which he correctly outlined (pp. 734-737) the facts as shown by the undisputed evidence — defendants having introduced none. Judges Hough and. Hand followed with separate opinions for affirmance, not, however, disagreeing with Judge Rogers as to the facts. These may
That act was passed after the-'beginning of the suit but more than two years before it was brought to hearing. We are clear that the courts below were right in giving effect to it; the real question being, whether they gave it the proper effect. In so far as the act (a) provided for relief by injunction to private suitors, (b) imposed conditions upon granting such relief under particular circumstances, and (c) otherwise modified the Sherman Act, it was effective from the time of its passage, and applicable to pending suits for injunction. Obviously, this form of relief operates only
in futuro,
and the right. to it must be determined as of the time of the hearing.
Pennsylvania
v.
Wheeling & Belmont Bridge Co.,
The Clayton Act, in § 1, includes the Sherman Act in a definition of “anti-trust laws,” and, in § 16 (38 Stat. 737), gives to private parties a right to relief by injunction in any court of the United States against threatened loss or
That complainant’s business of manufacturing printing presses and disposing of them in commerce is a property right, entitled to protection against unlawful injury or interference; that unrestrained access to the channels of interstate, commerce is necessary for the successful conduct of the business; that a widespread combination exists, to which defendants and the associations represented by them are parties, to hinder and obstruct complainant’s interstate trade and commerce by the means that have been indicated; and that as a result of it complainant has sustained substantial damage to its interstate trade, and is threatened with further and irreparable loss and damage in the future; is proved by clear and undisputed evidence. Hence the right to an injunction is clear if the threatened loss is due to a violation of the Sherman Act as amended by the Clayton Act.
Looking first to the former act, the thing declared illegal by its first section (26 Stat. 209) is “Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations.” The accepted definition of a conspiracy is, a combination of two or more persons by concerted action to accomplish á criminal or unlawful purpose, or to accomplish some purpose not in itself criminal of unlawful by criminal of unlawful means.
Pettibone
v.
United States,
The substance of thé matters here complained of is an interference with complainant’s interstate trade, intended to have coercive effect upon complainant, and produced by what is commonly known as a “secondary boycott,” that is, a combination not merely to refrain from dealing with complainant, or to advise or by peaceful means persuade complainant’s customers to refrain (“primary boycott”), but to exercise coercive pressure upon such customers, actual or prospective, in order to cause them to withhold or withdraw patronage from complainant through fear of loss or damage to themselves should they deal with it.
As we shall see, the recognized distinction between .a primary and a secondary boycott is material to be considered upon the question of the proper construction of the Claytpn Act. But, in determining the right to an injunction under that and the Sherman Act, it is of minor .consequence whether either kind of boycott is lawful or unlawful at common law or under the statutes of particular States. Those ácts, passed in the exercise of the power Of Congress to regulate commerce among the States, are of paramount authority, and their prohibitions must be given full effect irrespective of whether the things prohibited are lawful or unlawful at common law or under local statutes.
In
Loewe
v.
Lawlor,
In
Eastern States Retail Lumber Dealers’ Association
v.
United States,
It is settled by these decisions that such a restraint produced by peaceable persuasion is as much within the
Upon the question whether the provisions of the Clayton Act forbade the grant of an injunction under the circumstances of the present case, the Circuit Court of Appeals was divided; the majority holding that under § 20, “perhaps in conjunction with section 6,” there could be no injunction. These sections are set forth in the margin.
1
Defendants seek to derive from them some
The principal reliance is upon § .20. This regulates the granting of restraining orders and injunctions by the courts of the United States in a designated class of cases, with respect to (a) the terms and conditions of the relief and the practice to be pursued, and (b) the character of
The first paragraph merely puts into statutory form familiar restrictions upon the granting of injunctions already established and of general application in the equity practice of the courts of the United States. It is but declaratory of the law as it stood before. The second paragraph declares that “no
such
restraining order or injunction” shall prohibit certain condúct specified-— manifestly still referring to a “case between an employer and employees, . . involving, or growing out of, a dispute concerning terms or conditions of employment,” as designated in the first paragraph. It is very clear that the restriction upon the use of the injunction is in favor only of those concerned as parties to such a dispute as is described. The words defining. the permitted conduct include particular qualifications consistent with the general one respecting the nature of the case and dispute intended; and the concluding words, “nor shall any of the acts specified in this paragraph be considered or held to be violations of any law of the United- States,” are to. be read in the light of the context, and mean only that those acts are not to be so held when committed by parties concerned in “a dispute concerning terms or conditions of employment.” If the qualifying words are to have any effect, they must operate to confine -the restriction upon the granting of injunctions, and also the relaxation
' The majority of the Circuit Court of Appeals appear to have entertained the view .that the words “employers and employees,” as used in § 20, should be treated as referring to “the business class or clan to which the parties litigant respectively belong”; and that, as there had been a dispute at complainant’s factory in Michigan concerning the conditions of employment there — a dispute created, it is said, if it did not exist before, by the act of the Machinists’ Union in calling a strike at the factory — §20 operated to permit members of the Machinists’ Union elsewhere — some 60,000 in number — although standing in no relation of employment under complainant, past, present, or prospective, to make that dispute their own and proceed to instigate sympathetic strikes, picketing, and boycotting against employers 'wholly unconnected with complainant’s factory and having relations with complainant only in the way of purchasing its product in the ordinary course of interstate commerce — and this where there was no dispute between such employers and their employees respecting terms or conditions of employment.
We' deem this construction altogether inadmissible. Section 20 must be given full effect according to its terms as an expression of the purpose of Congress; but it must be borne in mind that the section imposes an exceptional and extraordinary restriction upon the equity powers of the courts of the United States and upon the general operation of the anti-trust laws, a restriction in the nature of a special privilege or immunity’ to a particular class, with corresponding detriment to the general public; and it would violate rules of statutory construction having general application and far-reaching importance to enlarge that special privilege by resorting to a loose construction of
Nor. can § 20 be regarded as bringing in all members of a labor organization as parties to a “dispute concerning terms or conditions of employment” which proximately affects only a few of them, with the result of conferring upon any and all members, — no matter how many thousands there may be, nor how remote from the actual conflict — those exemptions which Congress in terms conferred only upon parties to the dispute. That would enlarge by construction the provisions of § 20, which contain no mention of labor organizations, so as to produce an inconsistency with § 6, which deals specifically with the subject and must be deemed to express the measure and limit of the immunity intended by Congress to be incident to mere membership in such an organization. At the same time it would virtually repeal by implication the prohibition of the Sherman Act, scrfar as labor organizations are concerned, notwithstanding repeals by implication are not favored,; and in effect, as
The qualifying effect of the words descriptive of the nature of the dispute and the parties concerned is further borne out by the phrases defining the conduct that is not to be subjected to injunction or treated as a violation of the laws of the United States, that is to say: (a) “terminating any relation of employment, ... or persuading others by peaceful and lawful means so to do!’; (b) “attending at any place where any such person or persons may lawfully be, for the purpose of peacefully obtaining or communicating information, or from peacefully persuading any person to work or to abstain from working;” (c) “ceasing to patronize or to ^employ any party to such dispute, or . . . recommending, advising, or persuading others by peaceful and lawful means so to do”; (d) “paying or giving to, or withholding from, any person engaged in such dispute, any strike benefits . . .”; (e) “doing any act or thing which might lawfully be done in the absence of such dispute by any party thereto.” The emphasis placed on the words “lawful” and “lawfully,” “peaceful” and “peacefully,” and the references to the dispute and the parties to it, strongly rebut a legislative intent to confer a general immunity for conduct violative of the anti-trust laws, or otherwise unlawful. The subject of the boycott is dealt with specifically in the “ceasing to patronize” provision, and by the clear force of the language employed the exemption is limited to pressure exerted upon a “party to such dispute” by means of “peaceful and
lawful”
influence upon neutrals. There is nothing here to .justify defendants or the organizations they represent in using either threats or persuasion to bring about strikes or a cessation of work
The majority of the Circuit Court of Appeals, very properly treating the case as involving a secondary boycott, based the decision upon the view that it was the purpose of § 20 to legalize the secondary boycott “ at least in so far as it rests on, or consists of, refusing to work for any one who deals with the principal offender.” Characterizing the section as “blindly drawn,” and conceding that the meaning attributed to it was broad, the court referred to the legislative history of the enactment as a warrant for the construction adopted. Let us consider this.
By repeated decisions of this court it has come, to be well established that the debates in Congress expressive of the views and motives of individual members are not a safe guide, and hence may not be resorted to, in ascertaining the meaning and purpose of the law-making body.
Aldridge
v.
Williams,
In the case of the Clayton Act, the printed committee reports are not explicit with respect to the meaning of the “ceasing to patronize” clause of what is now §20. (See House Rept. No. 627, 63d Cong., 2nd sess., pp. 33-36; Senate Rept. No. 698, 63d Cong., 2nd sess.¿ pp. 29 — 31; the latter being a reproduction of the former.) But they contain extracts from judicial opinions and a then recent text-book sustaining the “primary boycott,” and expressjng an adverse view as to the secondary or coercive boy-' cott; and, on the whole, are far from manifesting a purpose to relax the prohibition against restraints of trade in favor of the secondary boycott.
. Moreover, the report was supplemented in this regard by the spokesman of the House committee (Mr. Webb) c-who had the bill in charge when it was under consideration by the House. The question whether the bill legalized secondary boycott having been raised, it was emphatically and unequivocally answered by him in the .negative.
1
The subject — he declared in substance or
The extreme and harmful consequences of the construction adopted in the court below are not to be ignored. The present case furnishes ah apt and convincing example. An ordinary controversy in a manufacturing establishment, said to concern the terms or conditions of employment, there, has been held a sufficient occasion for imposing a general embargo upon the products of the establishment and a nation-wide blockade of the channels of interstate commerce against them, carried out by inciting sympathetic strikes and a secondary boycott against complainant’s customers, to the great and incalculable damage of many innocent people far remote from any connection with or control over the original and actual dispute — people constituting, indeed, the general public
Reaching the conclusion, as we do, that complainant has a clear right to an injunction under the Sherman Act as amended by the Clayton Act, it becomes unnecessary to consider whether a like result would follow under the common law or local statutes; there being no suggestion that relief thereunder could be broader than that to which complainant is entitled under the acts of Congress.
There should be an injunction against defendants and the associations represented by them, and all members of those associations, restraining them, according to the prayer of the bill, from interfering or attempting to interfere with the sale, transportation, or delivery in interstate commerce of any printing press or presses manufactured by complainant, or the transportation, carting, installation, use,. operation, exhibition, display, or repairing of any such press or presses, or the performance of any contract or contracts made' by complainant respecting -the sale, transportation, délivery, or installation of any such press or presses, by causing or threatening to cause loss, damage, trouble, or' inconvenience to any person, firm; or corporation concerned in the purchase, transportation, carting, installation, use, operation, exhibition, display, or repairing of any such press or presses, or the performance of any such contract or contracts; and also and especially from using any force, threats, command, direction, or even persuasion with the object or having the effect of causing any person or persons to decline employment, cease employment, or not seek employment, or to refrain from work or céase working under any person, firm, or corporation being a purchaser or prospective purchaser of any printing press or presses from complainant,
Complainant is entitled to its costs in this court and in both courts below.
Decree reversed, and, the cause remanded to the District Court for further proceedings in conformity with this opinion.
The Duplex Company, a manufacturer of newspaper printing presses, seeks to enjoin officials of the machinists’ and affiliated unions from interfering with its business by inducing their members not to work for plaintiff or its customers in connection with the setting up\of presses made by it. Unlike
Hitchman Coal & Coke Co. v. Mitchell
The defendants admit interference with plaintiff’s business but justify on the following ground: There are in the United States only four manufacturers of such presses; and they are in active competition. Between 19Ó9 and 1913 the machinists’ union induced three of
First.
As to the rights at common law: Defendants’ justification is that of self-interest. They have supported the strike at the employer’s factory by a strike elsewhere against its product. They have injured the plaintiff, not maliciously, but in self-defense. They contend that the Duplex Company’s refusal to deal with the machinists’ union and to observe its standards threatened the interest not only of such union members as were its factory employees, but even more of all members of the several affiliated unions employed by plaintiff’s competitors and
The change in the law by which strikes once illegal and even criminal are now recognized as lawful was effected in America largely without the intervention of legislation. This reversal of a common-law rule was not due to the rejection by the courts of one principle and the adoption in its stead of another, but to a better realization of the facts of industrial life. It is conceded that, although the strike of the workmen in plaintiff’s factory injured its business, the strike was not an actionable wrong; because the obvious self-interest of the strikers constituted a justification. See
Pickett
v.
Walsh,
192 Massachusetts, 572. Formerly courts held that self-: interest could not be so served. Commons, History.of Labor in the United States, vol. 2, c. 5. But even after strikes to raise wages or reduce hours were held to be legal because of the self-interest, some courts held that there was not sufficient causal relationship between a strike to unionize a shop and the self-interest of the strikers to justify injuries inflicted.
Plant
v.
Woods,
176 Massachusetts, 492;
Lucke
v.
Clothing Cutters’
Assembly,
So, in the case at bar, deciding a question of fact upon the evidence introduced and matters of common knowledge, I should say, as the two lower courts apparently. have said, that the defendants and those from whom they
Second. As to the anti-trust laws of the United States: Section 20, óf the Clayton Act, declares,—
"Nor shall any of the acts specified in this paragraph be considered or held to be violations of any law of the United States.”
The acts which are thus referred to are, whether performed singly or in concert, — "Terminating any relation of employment, or . . . ceasing to perform any work or labor, or ... . recommending, advising, or persuading others by peaceful means so to do; or . . . attending at any place where any such person or persons may lawfully be, for the purpose of peacefully obtaining or communicating information, or . . . peacefully per
This statute was the fruit of unceasing agitation, which extended over more than twenty years and was designed to equalize before the law the position of workingmen and employer as industrial combatants. Aside from the use of the injunction, the chief source of dissatisfaction with the existing law lay in the doctrine of malicious combination,
1
and, in many parts of the country, in the judicial declarations of the illegality at common law of picketing and persuading others to leave work. The grounds for objection to the latter are obvious. The objection to the' doctrine of malicious combinations requires some explan
By 1914 the ideas of the advocates of legislation had fairly crystallized upon the manner in which the inequality and uncertainty of the law should be removed. It was to
The Duplex Company contends that § 20 of the Clayton Act does not apply to the case at bar, because it is restricted to cases “between an employer and employees, or between employers and employees, or between employees, or between persons employed and persons seeking employment, involving, or growing out of, a dispute concerning terms or conditions of employment”; whereas the case-at bar arises between an employer in Michigan and workingmen in New York not in its employ, and does not involve their conditions of employment. But Congress did not restrict the provision to employers and workingmen
in their em
Because I have come to the conclusion that both .the common law of a State and a statute of the United States declare the right of industrial combatants to push their struggle to the limits of the justification of self-interest, I do not wish to be understood as attaching any constitutional or moral sanction to that fight. All rights are derived from the purposes of the society in which they exist; above all rights rises duty to the community. The conditions developed in industry may be such that those engaged in it cannot continue their struggle without danger to the community. But it is not for judges to determine whether such conditions exist, nor is it their function to set the limits of permissible contest and to declare the duties which the new situation demands. Thié is the function of the legislature which, while limiting individual and ’group rights of aggression and defense, may substitute processes of justice for the more primitive method of trial by combat.
Notes
“Sec. 6. That the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. Nothing contained in the antitrust laws shall be construed to forbid the existence and operation of labor, agricultural, or horticultural organizations, instituted for the purposes of mutual help, and not having capital stock or conducted for profit, or to forbid or restrain individual members of such organizations from lawfully carrying out the legitimate objects thereof; nor shall such organizations, or the members thereof, be held or construed to be illegal combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade, under the antitrust laws.”
“Sec. 20. That no restraining order or injunction shall be granted by any court of the United States; or a judge or the judges thereof, in any case between an employer and employees, or between employers and employees, or between employees, or between persons employed and persons seeking employment, involving, or growing out of, a dispute concerning terms or conditions of employment, unless necessary to prevent irreparable injury to property, or to a property-right, of the party making the application, for which injury there is no adequate remedy at law, and such property or property right must be described with particularity in the application, which must be in writing and sworn to by the applicant or by his agent or attorney.
“And no such restraining order or injunction shall prohibit any person or persons, whether singly or in concert, from terminating -any relation of employment, or from ceasing to perform any work or labor, or from recommending, advising, or persuading others by peaceful means so to do; or from attending at any place where any such person or persons may lawfully be, for the purpose of peacefully obtaining
Extracts from Congressional Record, vol. 51, Part 10, 63d Cong.; 2d sess.
(Page 9652.)
Mr. Volstead. Would not this also legalize the secondary boy-' cott? ...
Mr. Webb. Mr. Chairman, I do not think it legalizes a secondary boycott.
Mr. Volstead. Let me read the lines, if the gentleman will permit. And no such restraining order or injunction shall prohibit anyone— “from ceasing to patronize
those who
[or to] employ any party to
Now, does not the word “others” in that instance refer to others than parties to the dispute?
Mr. Webb. No; because it says in line 15:
“From ceasing to patronize or employ any parties to such dispute.”
Mr. Volstead. . . . Can there be any doubt this is intended or does, in fact, legalize the secondary boycott?
Mr. Webb. I will say frankly to my, friend when this section was drawn.it was drawn with the careful purpose not to legalize the secondary boycott, and we do not think it does. There may be a difference of opinion about it, but it is the opinion of the committee that it does not legalize the secondary boycott and is not intended to do so. It does legalize the primary boycott; it does legalize the strike; it does legalize persuading others to strike, to quit work, and the other acts mentioned in section 18 [now section 20], but we did not intend, I will say frankly, to legalize the secondary boycott.
(Page 9653.)
Mr. Webb. I will say this section was drawn two years or more ago and was drawn carefully, and those who drew'this section drew it with the idea of excluding the secondary boycott. It passed the House, I think, by about 243 to 16, and the question of the secondary boycott was not raised then, because we understood so clearly it did not refer to or authorize the secondary boycott.
(Page 9658.)
Mr. Webb. Mr. Chairman, I should vote for the amendment offered by the gentlemen,, from Minnesota [Mr. Volstead] if I were not perfectly satisfied that it is taken care of in this section. The language the gentlemen reads does not authorize the secondary boycott, and he could not torture it into any such meaning. While it does authorize persons to cease to patronize the party to the dispute and to recommend to others to cease to patronize that same party to the dispute, that is not a secondary boycott, and you can not possibly make it mean a secondary boycott. Therefore this section does not authorize the secondary boycott.
I say again — and I speak for, I believe, practically every memberof the Judiciary Committee — that if this section did legalize the secondary boycott there would not be a man vote for it: It is not the purjwse of the committee to authorize it, and I do not think any person in this House wants to do it. We confine the boycotting to the parties to the dispute, allowing parties to cease to patronize that party and to ask others to cease to patronize the party to the dispute.
See “Malice and Unlawful Interference,” Ernest Freund, 11 Harv.' L. Rev. 449, 461; “Rights of Traders and Laborers,” Edward F. Mc-Clennen, 16 Harv. L. Rev. 237, 244; “Crucial Issues in Lab-.»- Litigation,” Jeremiah Smith, 20 Harv. L. Rev. 429, 451; Principles of Labor Legislation, Commons and Andrews, pp. 95-116; Hoxie, Trade Unionism in the United States, p. 231; Groat, Attitude of .American Courts Towards Labor Cases, pp. 76-77; 221; 246; J. W. Bryan, The Development of the English Law of Conspiracy, p. 147, et seq.
Report of the Industrial Commission, 1901, vol. XVII, p. cxiv, pp. 515, 556; Report of Royal Commission on Trade Disputes and Trade Combinations, 1906, p. 12; Report of Commission on Industrial Relations, 1915, p. 135; p. 377.
• For attempts to reach this doctrine by legislation see also 52nd Cong., H. R. 6640, §1; 56th Cong., H. R. 11667, § 7; 57th Cong., S. 649, § 7.
See James Wallace Bryan, The Development of the English Law of Conspiracy:—
“We find little difficulty in attributing the illegality of combinations to strike or otherwise to advance the interests of labor, not to the material loss inflicted upon the employer concerned, but to the harm supposed to result from their activities to the public at large.” . And since the. judge or jury believe the conduct socially bad and since it is admitledly done intentionally, not inadvertently, they declare that the actors are animated by malice which negatives the justification of “fair competition,” e. g., Lord Bowen in Mogul S. S. Co. v. McGregor, Gow & Co., 1892 A. C. 25, “intentionally to do that which is calculated ... to damage . . . and does damage another in his property or trade is actionable if done without just cause or excuse, and ... is what the law calls a malicious injury.”
See A. V. Dicey, “The Combination Laws as Illustrating the Relation Between Law and Opinion in England During the Nineteenth Century,” 17 Harv. L. Rev. 511, 532: “The very confusion of the present state of the law corresponds with and illustrates a confused State of opinion.”
It was said that this doctrine “ completely unsettle(d) the law . . . and set up the chancellor in the midst of the labor organization at the inception of a strike as an arbiter of their conduct as well as a controller of their fates.” 62nd Cong., 2nd sess. Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on H. R. 23635, p. 429.
Again, it was pointed out that the incorporation of this idea in the Sherman Law had “done violence to the right to strike — to cease work collectively . . . and to. the ,right to withhold patronage and to agree to withhold patronage.” Brief by Samuel Gompers, Hearings before the House Committee on the Judiciary on Trust Legislation, 63rd Cong., 2nd sess., vol. 2, p. 1808.
Compare the following: “There are apparently, only two lines of action possible: First to restrict the rights and powers of employers
The majority declared that the section sets out “specific acts which the best opinion of the courts holds to be within the right of parties involved upon one side or the other of a trades dispute,” which it has been necessary to affirm because of “the divergent views which the courts have expressed on the subject and the difference between courts in the application of recognized rules.” The minority insisted that the section prescribes “a set rule forbidding.under any circumstances the enjoining of certain acts which may or may not be actuated by a malicious motive or be done for the purpose of working an unlawful injury, etc.” 63rd Cong., 2nd sess., House Report 627, p. 30; id. Part 2, Appendix A, p. 20.