ment with the complainant was an illegal infringement of its property rights, and rested their defense on this branch of the case upon a denial that the conditions which I have found to exist did exist, and I have no hesitation in declaring that such conduct should be restrained.

There is still another branch of this case to be considered, and that is the placing of men, two or three in number, on the highways leading into Minotola, for the alleged purpose of peaceably persuading laborers from seeking employment with the complainant. After very carefully considering this question, I am of opinion that the complainant is entitled to have the defendants restrained from establishing or continuing such picketing, for the only purpose to be served is to intercept persons coming to seek employment with the complainant, and a court should judge of the right to maintain that sort of surveillance over a complainant's business, according to its evident intent and purpose. In its mildest form it is a nuisance, and to compel a manufacturer to have the natural flow of labor to his employment sifted by a self-constituted antagonistic committee whose very presence upon the highway for such purpose is deterrent is just as destructive of his property as is a boycott which prevents the sale of his product. As was well said by Judge McPherson, speaking for the United States circuit court: "There is and can be no such thing as peaceful picketing, any more than there can be chaste vulgarity, or peaceful mobbing, or lawful lynching." (Atch., T. & S. F. Ry. Co. v. Gee (C. C.), 139 Fed. 582-584.) The single object sought to be obtained by picketing is to prevent the complainant from continuing its business by depriving it of one of its essential necessities, namely, labor; for, if the picketing has not that object, the reason for maintaining pickets would not exist. That a person who has left his employer may approach another and, if he is willing to listen, tell him the truth regarding the conditions existing, does not meet the question being considered, because in this case there is a well-defined scheme in which a number of persons have joined to prevent the complainant from carrying on his business. It is not a case where the individual on his own behalf is taking his grievance to a willing listener, but a combination of men, backed by great wealth, conspiring to deprive the complainant of the means of carrying on its business, with the hope that it will ultimately be compelled to yield and surrender its property to the control of strangers, and any picketing which deprives a citizen of his property rights, which it is manifest the acts complained of in this case are intended to accomplish, is subversive of all law and order, and, if permitted to continue, will in the end destroy the prosperity and happiness of society. The defendants frankly admit that the purpose of picketing is to induce every person intending to seek employment with the complainant to refrain from doing so, and attempt to justify it upon the ground that they are competitors of the complainant in the labor market, and, being such, have the right to take from it all laborers that they can persuade to leave it, or refrain from entering its employ. Honest competition of such character is what every business man must submit to, but it must be competition and not a malicious intention to injure. Inducing the employees of a person to leave their employment, or others not to accept his employment, for the purpose of crippling his business, where the organization offering the induce

ment is not engaged in any business, competitive or otherwise, and which has no need of the labor, and no reason for interfering beyond the avowed purpose of overthrowing the complainant, in the stand which it has taken against the demand of the organization, that it shall unionize its factory, is not the competition which the law recognizes or upholds; for "the result which they seek to obtain can not come directly from anything they do within the regular line of their business as workers competing in the labor market. It can only come from action outside of the province of workingmen, intended directly to injure another." (Berry v. Donavan, 188 Mass. 353, 74 N. É. 603, 5 L. R. A. (N. S.) 899, 108 Am. St. Rep. 499.)

It was urged on the argument that the proofs did not show that every defendant was guilty of some act of violence. It, however, appears that all of the defendants were a part of the combination to compel the complainant to unionize its factory. They did not leave their work and go to their homes, but congregated in large crowds, some participating in one act of violence, some in another; and it is impossible, in any ordinary way, to positively identify each member making up a mob of two or three hundred men. They were all at the headquarters provided by the association for the strikers; were all paid out of the funds of the association, and the strikers were under a written contract with the complainant to serve for a definite period, and all joined together in a body to disregard their written obligations. These acts show that a conspiracy was entered into by all of the defendants to compel the complainant to conduct its business under rules and regulations to which it was unwilling to submit, and the overt acts of some of the defendants in carrying out the object of the combination, having caused irreparable injury to complainant's property, all those who aided and abetted are equally responsible, and all should be enjoined, for the injunction can work no hardship, as it affects no right of property, or restrains the doing of any lawful

act.

The complainant is entitled to an injunction against the defendant association and its officers, particularly the defendants Hayes and Agard, restraining it and them from persuading or inducing persons or corporations not to deal with it because it employs nonunion workmen, or refuses to be unionized, and against all of the defendants according to the prayer of the bill, except so much thereof as relates to the paying of money to the employees of the complainant who have left or may voluntarily leave its service.

ORGANIZATIONS-ENFORCEMENT

LABOR OF UNION RULESSTRIKES INJUNCTION-Jetton -Dekle Lumber Company v. Mather, Supreme Court of Florida, 43 Southern Reporter, page 590.—This case was before the supreme court on an appeal from the circuit court of Hillsboro County. The judge of the latter court had granted an injunction against strikers, members of various labor organizations affiliated as a “Building trades council," and on a hearing for a dissolution had continued the injunction with a certain modification. In its modified form the bill prohibited intimidation or coercion of any

sort against persons accepting employment with the plaintiff company, interference with the business of the company or with its employees, and boycotts or attempts to boycott its business. The modification secured allowed the unions to enforce their rules providing for the expulsion of such of their members as might incur the penalties prescribed for the violation of union rules, and it was on this point that the company appealed.

The opinion of the supreme court was delivered by Judge Cockrell, and sustained the views of the lower court, on grounds which appear in the following quotation:

Unquestionably an individual can stop work at any time without cause, being liable only for a breach of contract; and no element of contract as between the complainant and these defendants is alleged. Does the fact that more than one individual has quit work make a difference, under the circumstances above stated? We may assume that it is not universally true that many may do what one may lawfully do, though this must be said with reservation, and that a conspiracy" may cause a wrong which one man, acting by himself, could not commit. But before the courts can punish or prevent a conspiracy, either the act conspired or the manner of its doing must be unlawful. Are not both alternatives absent in the case of a simple strike? It is certainly lawful to attempt by negotiation, or other peaceable, legitimate ways, to get higher pay for one's labor, and, if the demand is not met, to go elsewhere with one's labor, or to sit idle, if needs be, until satisfactory arrangements are made. Labor unions in and of themselves can not be said to be unlawful, and yet one of the prime objects of their existence is by combinations of the supply to regulate the demand. Some of the cases, particularly the English cases, stress the motive underlying the strike, and apparently hold that if the strike is to better the condition of the workman it is lawful, but if it be to punish the employer it is unlawful. If this be the correct delimitation, this case comes up to the rule. There is nothing personal to the complainant in the strike, but simply and entirely an endeavor to obtain advantage for the defendants.

No mandatory injunction is asked, and nothing can possibly be done as to those laborers who voluntarily left their work and are voluntarily remaining away; but, says the appellant, these various labor unions, under the modification, can use moral suasion, moral coercion, upon their respective members by fines and threats of expulsion. This was a risk voluntarily assumed by the members entering the unions, and if no longer willing to pay the price, if the advantages derived are not equal to the burdens assumed, each member has a perfect right to withdraw from the union, to seek to get back his former employment, and to be protected therein by the injunction still in force.

It can hardly be questioned that the decided weight, if not the universal rule, of the modern American cases, sustains the action of the circuit court in refusing to extend the effects of the injunction so as to include the peaceable enforcement by labor unions of their reasonable rules. [Cases cited.]

Is there any declared policy in this State to force us to put ourselves out of alignment with our sister States? Especially must this

be clear before we would interfere to lay the heavy hand of injunction where the circuit judge, more familiar than ourselves with the conditions confronting the city of Tampa, has refused to do so.

In Chipley v. Atkinson, 23 Fla. 206, 1 South. 934, 11 Am. St. Rep. 367, this court held that an action would lie in behalf of a discharged employee against one who maliciously procured his discharge, and stress is laid upon the evil intent with which the act was done. That case, so far as it is in point, would tend rather to sustain the modification of the injunction before us. Not only was it there held that the mere attempt to procure a discharge would not be actionable, even though the attempt were accompanied with a malicious intent, but it was clearly intimated that, even as to the consummated act, malice was essential to a cause of action; and, as we have said above, a peaceful strike, accompanied by an enforcement of the rules of a voluntary organization to the extent of expulsion against those members who disobey the rules, does not necessarily show malice.

Chapter 4144, page 69, Laws of 1893, entitled "An act to prohibit wrongful combinations against workmen, and to punish the same," presents some difficulty. As this statute is probably unique, we quote at length.

"Section 1. If two or more persons shall agree, conspire, combine, or confederate together for the purpose of preventing any person or persons from procuring work in any firm or corporation, or to cause the discharge of any person or persons from work in such firm or corporation, or if any person or persons shall verbally or by a written or printed communication, threaten any injury to the life, property or business of any person, for the purpose of procuring the discharge of any workman in any firm or corporation, or to prevent any person or persons from procuring work in such firm or corporation, such person or persons so combining shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction [thereof] shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars each, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year."

Construing the act with reference to its restrictive title, it appears that only wrongful combinations against workmen are denounced, and that the combination must have for its main object or purpose the preventing of a certain person or persons from obtaining work, or causing their discharge. An indictment based upon the act would have to allege the combination to have been for the purpose of preventing certain named persons from securing work with some firm or corporation, or causing their discharge. (For some strange reason, if the employer be an individual, not a firm or corporation, the statute does not purport to denounce the wrongful combination.) This legislation, coming after the decision in Chipley v. Atkinson, supra, should be read in the light of that decision; and, so read, it seems to us that it does not come up to the facts before us. Upon the facts before the circuit judge he might well have found that the purpose of the combination was not to prevent particular individuals obtaining work, but the purpose was to secure the work for themselves. It is not the duty of courts of equity to decide upon nice questions of criminal law, resolving them against the defendants, impose its injunction against the commission of the acts out of which such nice questions arise. If a combination of workmen for their own benefit operate an injury

to the property of others, and that combination is clearly against the criminal laws of the State, a court of equity may intervene to protect the property right, even though the criminal courts may also be resorted to for enforcing the penalties imposed. Such seems to be the current holding of the courts in this country. Yet, where there is serious doubt as to the facts alleged constituting a crime, it would seem best to leave the solution of the doubt to the forum appointed by the constitution directly and specifically for the trial of criminal

causes.

We regret that we are unable to throw light upon this much vexed live question of the hour. Following the correct principle and the weight of the modern American cases, in so far as we are able to ascertain the principle and the weight, we find no error in the modification of the injunction, and therefore it is affirmed.

TORTS

LIABILITY OF EMPLOYER FOR ACTS OF EMPLOYEES ACTS OF VIOLENCE DURING STRIKE-Shay v. American Iron and Steel Manufacturing Company, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 67 Atlantic Reporter, page 54.-Sallie E. Shay brought an action in the court of common pleas of Lebanon County to recover damages for injuries inflicted by employees of the company named during a strike. On hearing the court discharged the defendant, entering a compulsory nonsuit, which it refused to take off. An appeal was taken to the supreme court to secure the removal of the nonsuit, but failed. The supreme court adopted the opinion of the court below in full, which presents the facts, and from which the following is quoted:

The plaintiff is the owner of a house and a lot of ground, situated on Weidman street, in the city of Lebanon, and alleges that on September 20, 1902, several bullets were fired into her dwelling house by employees of the defendant company, damaging her house, and by reason whereof she was frightened and shocked, thereby causing her to be permanently injured.

From the testimony produced by the plaintiff it appears that at the time of the alleged injury a large number of the employees of the defendant company were on a strike, and that on the afternoon of September 20, 1902, a carload of colored men, who were engaged to work for defendant, arrived at Lebanon, and were taken to its works inside of the fence inclosing the said works. In taking said car with said colored men from the station to the works, they were followed by a crowd of men and boys, some of whom jumped on the platform of the car, opened the door, and called them vile names, to which no reply was made by anyone inside of the car. When the colored men left the car, at the works inside of the inclosure, the persons congregated on the outside commenced to throw stones and other missiles into the inclosure. A number of shots were then fired from the inside and also from the outside. During this time it is alleged, and sworn to by the plaintiff, that a bullet was fired through a secondstory window of her house at or near where she was standing, facing the defendant's works, and which was afterwards found embedded in the wall of the house and which produced the said fright and shock.