cases;

but what employers need is a readier means of invoking such operation. The cases recently dealt with were clear infringements of the law. Many hundreds of less gross cases-but, when the law is fully comprehended, none the less evident-are not brought into Court, or even to public light, because of the difficulties already explained.

From America we have just received a good lesson on a short way with the picket. Not appreciating Mr. Eugene Debs, the notorious strike leader, the Monougal Coal and Coke Company has obtained, through the agency of a shareholder, an injunction from Judge Jackson, of the United States Court, to restrain Mr. Debs and his followers "from in any way interfering with or molesting the management, or the conducting of property of the Company, either by trespassing upon the property of the Company, or by approaching thereto, or inciting its employees to strike, or interfering in any manner whatever, either by word or deed, in the Company's affairs.” It is a pity that this country does not deal as summarily with similar outside and arrogant interference in our own labour troubles. If we did, Mr. Burnett's annual Reports on Strikes and Lockouts would not consist of volumes of three or four hundred pages, summarizing the details of some one thousand odd strikes, and Lord Penrhyn's victory over the mischief-makers would have been consummated several months earlier. Indeed, that dispute-originally artificial-would never have reached the climax of a protracted, unreasonable, and foolish strike.

V. THE PRACTICE AND LAW IN THE

COLONIES AND ABROAD.

FOR a large part of the information in this chapter acknowledgment is due to the valuable series of "Foreign Reports" issued by the Labour Commission, and compiled by the secretary, Mr. Geoffrey Drage.

UNITED STATES.

Picketing, accompanied by intimidation of the most aggravated character, has been a frequent incident in American railroad strikes. The Report of the Select Committee of Investigation, appointed in 1886, contains abundant evidence of attempts to wreck trains, violence offered to employees remaining at work, the sending of threatening letters, attacks by armed mobs upon yards where labourers were at work, and nocturnal visits to the houses of such labourers by gangs of masked intimidators.

In Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, and Pennsylvania there are special laws with regard to railroad strikes; and Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey,

New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin legislate also against intimidation in general. Besides the riots among miners and iron and steel workers, mention is made in the Commissioner of Labour's Report of a case in which "the miners met and proceeded in a body to the dwelling places of the new men, and succeeded in prevailing on the men to quit work, the miners paying their expenses back to the places from which they came."

New

Similar measures were employed in 1890 by the members of the Boot and Shoe Workers' International Union during a strike in Rochester, New York. employees were met at the stations and offered their return fares or wages equivalent to those promised by the company. Where these means failed, the strikers attempted to deter employees from entering the factory by abuse and threats of violence.

Laws against blacklisting existed in Massachusetts, Illinois, Oregon, Colorado, and Wisconsin, and there is little room to doubt that the practice has been, and is, widely prevalent. Mr. Carroll D. Wright, speaking of the manufacturers of Fall River, Mass., 1884, says: "Other manufacturers granted that the black list was in existence, and stated that its use was necessary to guard against strikes, one saying: 'If we wanted to black list a man, we would undoubtedly do so.' Another said: "This [blacklisting] is done by a Committee of the A man's name is sent Manufacturers' Board of Trade.

to this Committee, and they examine the list and take action on it. The black list is directed mostly towards

the members of the Mule Spinners' Union, for they cause us the most trouble. For our own protection, we started a secret service, and it has accomplished much good, as it gave us the names and occupations of the most prominent in agitating strikes. There have been twenty-six mule spinners black-listed since last fall.'" The same practice is mentioned in connection with the telegraphers' strike in 1883, and it was admitted by one of the superintendents of the Missouri Pacific line, before the Select Committee of Investigation, that a list of discharged men had been kept by the Missouri Pacific Company, and sent monthly to every point on the line; though it was alleged that this list had been abandoned more than a year before the strike, and the New York Report for 1889 says: "The refusal to reinstate men who have gone out is too frequent to be passed without notice."

The Statute of Conspiracy of 1830, in its final form, contained the following sections :—

"Section 8.-If two or more persons conspire......to commit any act injurious to the public health, to public morals, or to trade or commerce, or for the perversion or obstruction of justice or the due administration of the laws, they shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanour.

"Section 9.-No conspiracies, except such as are enumerated in the last section, are punishable criminally."

In 1870 the New York Legislature took combinations to raise or maintain wages out of the category of

conspiracies to commit acts injurious to trade or commerce. In 1881 the Penal Code, enacted in New York, added to the previous definition of criminal conspiracy a section defining it to be an agreement "to prevent another from exercising a lawful trade or calling, or doing any other lawful act by force, threats, or intimidation, or by interfering or threatening to interfere with tools, implements, or property belonging to or used by another, or with the use and employment thereof." In 1882 the following section was added :

"Section 170.-No conspiracy is punishable criminally unless it is one of those enumerated in the last two sections; and the orderly and peaceable assembling or co-operation of persons employed in any calling, trade, or handicraft for the purpose of obtaining an advance of wages, or compensation, or of maintaining such rate, is not a conspiracy."

Twenty-four of the States of the Union have conspiracy statutes-viz., Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

NEWFOUNDLAND AND CANADA.

There are complaints both from Quebec and from St. John, New Brunswick, with regard to the action of members of the Ship-labourers' Society. In the words of one witness, "these labourers have gone on the