the State is in a much more satisfactory condition than at any time since the act came into operation. During the year 105 new huts were erected and additions and improvements made to many others that did not in all respects fulfill the requirements.

During 1906 there were 42 prosecutions for breaches of the Factories and Shops Act, resulting in 31 convictions, 8 cases being withdrawn and 3 cases being dismissed. Under the Early Closing Acts there were 265 prosecutions, resulting in 217 convictions, 29 cases being withdrawn and 19 cases being dismissed.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

Report of the Royal Commission on the Ventilation and Sanitation of Mines. Department of Mines, 1905. 500 pp.

This inquiry, made by a royal commission in 1904-5, the report of which was submitted to the governor of Western Australia on February 25, 1905, relates to the conditions of the ventilation and sanitation of the mines of Western Australia, the effects of the said conditions on the health of the persons employed in the mines, and the measures which should be taken, when necessary, to bring about improvement thereof.

There were 172 sittings of the commission, and visits were made to the principal mining centers of the State, which were easily accessible. Evidence was taken from 192 witnesses, which included mining engineers, managers, and inspectors; under managers, shiftbosses, and mining contractors; miners; metallurgists and representatives of explosives companies; officials of miners' and workers' associations, etc. The examination ranged over a wide field of varied mining experience in the endeavor to collect all possible information that would be of service to the commission. Every phase of the subject of ventilation and sanitation was practically and exhaustively considered, together with the related subjects of dust in mines and mills, gases due to explosives, fumes from the cyanide process and other dangerous fumes, health of miners, etc.

The conclusion of the report of the commission on the measures to be taken for improving the ventilation and sanitation of mines resulted in suggested legislation providing that The Mines Regulation Act, 1895, should be amended so as to include provisions for carrying into effect the recommendations made by the commission. Further, the commission expressed the opinion that the sanitary regulations suggested should apply to coal as well as to metalliferous mines, and that they should be made under The Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1902, as well as under The Mines Regulation Act, 1895.

The suggested legislation relates to (1) ventilation of mines, (2) prevention of dust, (3) use of explosives, (4) connections between levels and adjoining mines, and (5) sanitary conditions.

DECISIONS OF COURTS AFFECTING LABOR.

[Except in cases of special interest, the decisions here presented are restricted to those rendered by the Federal courts and the higher courts of the States and TerriLories. Only material portions of such decisions are reproduced, introductory and explanatory matter being given in the words of the editor. Decisions under statute law are indexed under the proper headings in the cumulative index, page 657 et seq.]

DECISIONS UNDER STATUTE LAW.

BOYCOTTS COMBINATIONS IN RESTRAINT OF INTERSTATE COMMERCE-ANTITRUST LAW-Loewe v. Lawlor, United States Supreme Court, 28 Supreme Court Reporter, page 301.-Lawlor and his associates were members of a local branch of the United Hatters of North America, which organization had undertaken to procure the unionizing of the factory of the complainants. The complaint filed is given in full in the margin of the report of the opinion; but since the essential parts are summarized or reproduced in the opinion itself, no preliminary statement thereof is necessary.

The case was brought in the United States circuit court for the district of Connecticut, in which it was held that the facts did not bring the case within the provisions of the antitrust act, and it was dismissed on demurrer to the complaint. (148 Fed. Rep., 924. See Bulletin No. 70, p. 710. See also 142 Fed. Rep., 216; 130 Fed. Rep., 633.) An injunction was secured by Loewe against the California State Federation of Labor. (139 Fed. Rep., 71. See Bulletin No. 61, p. 1067.) Appeal was taken to the circuit court of appeals for the second circuit, which certified to the Supreme Court the question as to the applicability of the act in question. Afterward, by mutual agreement, the entire case was transferred to the Supreme Court, which held that the case fell within the provisions of the antitrust act, being a combination in restraint of trade, and remanded the case for a new trial. The opinion of the court was delivered by Chief Justice Fuller, and is in the main as follows:

The question is whether upon the facts therein averred [i. e., in the complaint] and admitted by the demurrer this action can be maintained under the antitrust act.

The first, second and seventh sections of that act are as follows: Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, of conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several tatos, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal. Every pton who shall make any such contract or engage in any such cornation or conspiracy, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding ... thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, My both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.

2. "Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.

7. "Any person who shall be injured in his business or property by any other person or corporation by reason of anything forbidden or declared to be unlawful by this act, may sue therefor in any circuit court of the United States in the district in which the defendant resides or is found, without respect to the amount in controversy, and shall recover threefold the damages by him sustained, and the costs of suit, including a reasonable attorney's fee."

In our opinion, the combination described in the declaration is a combination "in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States," in the sense in which those words are used in the act, and the action can be maintained accordingly.

And that conclusion rests on many judgments of this court, to the effect that the act prohibits any combination whatever to secure action which essentially obstructs the free flow of commerce between the States, or restricts, in that regard, the liberty of a trader to engage in business.

The combination charged falls within the class of restraints of trade aimed at compelling third parties and strangers involuntarily not to engage in the course of trade except on conditions that the combination imposes; and there is no doubt that (to quote from the well-known work of Chief Justice Erle on Trade Unions) "at common law every person has individually, and the public also has collectively, a right to require that the course of trade should be kept free from unreasonable obstruction." But the objection here is to the jurisdiction, because, even conceding that the declaration states a case good at common law, it is contended that it does not state one within the statute. Thus, it is said, that the restraint alleged would operate to entirely destroy defendants' business and thereby include intrastate trade as well; that physical obstruction is not alleged as contemplated; and that defendants are not themselves engaged in interstate trade.

We think none of these objections are tenable, and that they are disposed of by previous decisions of this court.

United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Association, 166 U. S. 290; United States v. Joint Traffic Association, 171 U. S. 505; and Northern Securities Company v. United States, 193 U. S. 197, hold in effect that the antitrust law has a broader application than the prohibition of restraints of trade unlawful at common law. Thus in the Trans-Missouri case it was said that, "assuming that agreements of this nature are not void at common law, and that the various cases cited by the learned courts below show it, the answer to the statement of their validity is to be found in the terms of the statute under consideration;" and in the Northern Securities case that "the act declares illegal every contract, combination or conspiracy in whatever form, of whatever nature, and whoever may be the parties to it, which directly or necessarily operates in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States.'

We do not pause to comment on cases such as United States v. Knight, 156 U. S. 1; Hopkins v. United States, 171 U. S. 578; and Anderson v. United States, Id. 604; in which the undisputed facts showed that the purpose of the agreement was not to obstruct or restrain interstate commerce. The object and intention of the combination determined its legality.

In Swift v. United States, 196 U. S. 395, a bill was brought against a number of corporations, firms and individuals of different States, alleging that they were engaged in interstate commerce in the purchase, sale, transportation and delivery, and subsequent resale at the point of delivery, of meats; and that they combined to refrain from bidding against each other in the purchase of cattle; to maintain a uniform price at which the meat should be sold; and to maintain uniform charges in delivering meats thus sold through the channels of interstate trade to the various dealers and consumers in other States. And that thus they artificially restrained commerce in fresh meats from the purchase and shipment of live stock from the plains to the final distribution of the meats to the consumers in the markets of the country.

Mr. Justice Holmes, speaking for the court, said:

"Commerce among the States is not a technical legal conception, but a practical one, drawn from the course of business. When cattle are sent for sale from a place in one State with the expectation that they will end their transit after purchase in another, and when in effect they do so, with only the interruption necessary to find a purchaser at the stock yards, and when this is a typical, constantly recurring course, the current thus existing is a current of commerce among the States, and the purchase of the cattle is a part and incident of such

commerce.

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"The general objection is urged that the bill does not set forth sufficient definite or specific facts. This objection is serious, but it seems to us inherent in the nature of the case. The scheme alleged is so vast that it presents a new problem in pleading. If, as we must assume, the scheme is entertained, it is, of course, contrary to the very words of the statute. Its size makes the violation of the law more conspicuous, and yet the same thing makes it impossible to fasten the principal fact to a certain time and place. The elements, too, are so numerous and shifting, even the constituent parts alleged are and from their nature must be so extensive in time and space, that something of the same impossibility applies to them.

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"The scheme as a whole seems to us to be within reach of the law. The constituent elements, as we have stated them, are enough to give to the scheme a body and, for all that we can say, to accomplish it. Moreover, whatever we may think of them separately, when we take them up as distinct charges, they are alleged sufficiently as elements of a scheme. It is suggested that the several acts charged are lawful and that intent can make no difference. But they are bound together as parts of a single plan. The plan may make the parts unlawful."

And the same principle was expressed in Aikens v. Wisconsin, 195 U. S. 194 [Bulletin No. 57, p. 678], involving a statute of Wisconsin

prohibiting combinations "for the purpose of willfully or maliciously injuring another in his reputation, trade, business or profession by any means whatever," in which Mr. Justice Holmes said:

The statute is directed against a series of acts, and acts of several, the acts of combining, with intent to do other acts. The very plot is an act in itself.' Mulcahy v. The Queen, L. R. 3 H. L. 306, 317. But an act, which in itself is merely a voluntary muscular contraction, derives all its character from the consequences which will follow it under the circumstances in which it was done. When the acts consist of making a combination calculated to cause temporal damage, the power to punish such acts, when done maliciously, can not be denied because they are to be followed and worked out by conduct which might have been lawful if not preceded by the acts. No conduct has such an absolute privilege as to justify all possible schemes of which it may be a part. The most innocent and constitutionally protected of acts or omissions may be made a step in a criminal plot, and if it is a step in a plot neither its innocence nor the Constitution is sufficient to prevent the punishment of the plot by law.'

In Addyston Pipe and Steel Company v. United States, 175 U. S. 211, the petition alleged that the defendants were practically the only manufacturers of cast iron within thirty-six States and Territories, that they had entered into a combination by which they agreed not to compete with each other in the sale of pipe, and the territory through which the constituent companies could make sales was allotted between them. This court held that the agreement which, prior to any act of transportation, limited the prices at which the pipe could be sold after transportation, was within the law. Mr. Justice Peckham, delivering the opinion, said: "And when Congress has enacted a statute such as the one in question, any agreement or combination which directly operates not alone upon the manufacture but upon the sale, transportation and delivery of an article of interstate commerce, by preventing or restricting its sale, etc., thereby regulates interstate commerce.'

In Montague & Company . Lowry, 193 U. S. 38, which was an action brought by a private citizen under section 7 against a combination engaged in the manufacture of tiles, defendants were wholesale dealers in tiles in California and combined with manufacturers in other States to restrain the interstate traffic in tiles by refusing to sell any tiles to any wholesale dealer in California who was not a member of the association except at a prohibitive rate. The case was a commercial boycott against such dealers in California as would not or could not obtain membership in the association. The restraint did not consist in a physical obstruction of interstate commerce, but in the fact that the plaintiff and other independent dealers could not purchase their tiles from manufacturers in other States because such manufacturers had combined to boycott them. This court held that this obstruction to the purchase of tiles, a fact antecedent to physical transportation, was within the prohibition of the act. Mr. Justice Peckham, speaking for the court, said, concerning the agreement, that it "restrained trade, for it narrowed the market for the sale of tiles in California from the manufacturers and dealers therein in other States, so that they could only be sold to the members of the association, and it enhanced prices to the nonmember."