thinking to have the less popular view of the law stated, and therefore, although when I have been unable to bring my brethren to share my convictions my almost invariable practice is to defer to them in silence, I depart from that practice in this case, notwithstanding my unwillingness to do so in support of an already rendered judgment of my own. ... 1. In the first place, a word or two should be said as to the meaning of the report... to be construed, and that, if they were not prepared to do so, they would give an opportunity to the defendants to have it amended in accordance with what I state my meaning to be. The defendants are enjoined by the final decree from intimidating by threats, express or implied, of physical harm to body or property, any person who may be desirous of entering into the employment of the plaintiff so far as to prevent him from entering the same. . . . The important difference between the preliminary and the final injunction is that the former goes further, and forbids the defendants to interfere with the plaintiff's business "by any scheme. . . organized for the purpose of preventing any person or persons who now are or may hereafter be ... desirous of entering the [plaintiff's employment] from entering it." It appears to me that the judgment of the majority turns in part on the assumption that the patrol necessarily carries with it a threat of bodily harm. That assumption I think unwarranted, for the reasons which I have given. Furthermore, it cannot be said, I think, that two men walking together up and down a sidewalk and speaking to those who enter a certain shop do necessarily and always thereby convey a threat of force. I do not think it possible to discriminate, and to say that two workmen, or even two representatives of an organization of workmen, do so, especially when they are, and are known to be, under the injunction of this Court not to do so. this I pass to the real difference between the interlocutory and the final decree. 2. I agree, whatever may be the law in the case of a single defendant, Rice v. Albee, 164 Mass. 88, that when a plaintiff proves that several persons have combined and conspired to injure his business, and have done acts producing that effect, he shows temporal damage and a cause of action, unless the facts disclose, or the defendants prove, some ground of excuse or justification. And I take it to be settled, and rightly settled, that doing that damage by combined persuasion is actionable, as well as doing it by falsehood or by force. Walker v. Cronin, 107 Mass. 555; Morasse v. Brochu, 151 Mass. 567; Tasker v. Stanley, 153 Mass. 148. Nevertheless, in numberless instances the law warrants the intentional infliction of temporal damage because it regards it as justified. It is on the question of what shall amount to a justification, and more especially on the nature of the considerations which really determine or ought to determine the answer to that question, that judicial reasoning seems to me often to be inadequate. The true grounds of decision are considerations of policy and of social advantage, and it is vain to suppose that solutions can be attained merely by logic and the general propositions of law which nobody disputes. Propositions as to public policy rarely are unanimously accepted, and still more rarely, if ever, are capable of unanswerable proof. They require a special training to enable any one even to form an intelligent opinion about them. In the early stages of law, at least, they generally are acted on rather as inarticulate instincts than as definite ideas for which a rational defence is ready. 66 To illustrate what I have said in the last paragraph, it has been the law for centuries that a man may set up a business in a country town too small to support more than one, although he expects and intends thereby to ruin some one already there, and succeeds in his intent. In such a case he is not held to act unlawfully and without justifiable cause," as was alleged in Walker v. Cronin and Rice v. Albee. The reason, of course, is that the doctrine generally has been accepted that free competition is worth more to society than it costs, and that on this ground the infliction of the damage is privileged. Commonwealth v. Hunt, 4 Met. 111, 134. Yet even this proposition nowadays is disputed by a considerable body of persons, including many whose intelligence is not to be denied, little as we may agree with them. . . . I have seen the suggestion made that the conflict between employers and employed is not competition. But I venture to assume that none of my brethren would rely on that suggestion. If the policy on which our law is founded is too narrowly expressed in the term free competition, we may substitute free struggle for life. Certainly the policy is not limited to struggles between persons of the same class competing for the same end. It applies to all conflicts of temporal interests. I have chosen this illustration partly with reference to what I have to say next. It shows, without the need of further authority, that the policy of allowing free competition justifies the intentional inflicting of temporal damage, including the damage of interference with a man's business, by some means, when the damage is done not for its own sake, but as an instrumentality in reaching the end of victory in the battle of trade. In such a case it cannot matter whether the plaintiff is the only rival of the defendant, and so is aimed at specifically, or is one of a class all of whom are hit. 3. The only debatable ground is the nature of the means by which such damage may be inflicted. We all agree that it cannot be done by force or threats of force. We all agree, I presume, that it may be done by persuasion to leave a rival's shop and come to the defendant's. It may be done by the refusal or withdrawal of various pecuniary advantages which, apart from this consequence, are within the defendant's lawful control. It may be done by the withdrawal, or threat to withdraw, such advantages from third persons who have a right to deal or not to deal with the plaintiff, as a means of inducing them not to deal with him either as customers or servants. Commonwealth v. Hunt, 4 Met. 111, 132, 133; Bowen v. Matheson, 14 Allen, 499; Heywood v. Tillson, 75 Maine, 225; Mogul Steamship Co. v. McGregor, [1892] A. C. 25. 4. . . . But there is a notion which latterly has been insisted on a good deal, that a combination of persons to do what any one of them lawfully might do by himself will make the otherwise lawful conduct unlawful. It would be rash to say that some as yet unformulated truth may not be hidden under this proposition. But, in the general form in which it has been presented and accepted by many Courts, I think it plainly untrue, both on authority and on principle. Commonwealth v. Hunt, 4 Met. 111; Randall v. Hazelton, 12 Allen, 412, 414. There was combination of the most flagrant and dominant kind in Bowen v. Matheson and in the Mogul Steamship Company's case, and combination was essential to the success achieved. But it is not necessary to cite cases; it is plain from the slightest consideration of practical affairs, or the most superficial reading of industrial history, that free competition means combination, and that the organization of the world, now going on so fast, means an ever-increasing might and scope of combination. It seems to me futile to set our faces against this tendency. Whether beneficial on the whole, as I think it, or detrimental, it is inevitable, unless the fundamental axioms of society, and even the fundamental conditions of life, are to be changed. One of the eternal conflicts out of which life is made up is that between the effort of every man to get the most he can for his services and that of society, disguised under the name of capital, to get his services for the least possible return. Combination on the one side is patent and powerful. Combination on the other is the necessary and desirable counterpart, if the battle is to be carried on in a fair and equal way. I am unable to reconcile Temperton v. Russell, [1893] 1 Q. B. 715, and the cases which follow it, with the Mogul Steamship Company case. But Temperton v. Russell is not a binding authority here, and therefore I do not think it necessary to discuss it. 5. If it be true that workingmen may combine with a view, among other things, to getting as much as they can for their labor, just as capital may combine with a view to getting the greatest possible return, it must be true that when combined they have the same liberty that combined capital has to support their interests by argument, persuasion, and the bestowal or refusal of those advantages which they otherwise lawfully control. I can remember when many people thought that, apart from violence or breach of contract, strikes were wicked, as organized refusals to work. I suppose that intelligent economists and legislators have given up that notion to-day. I feel pretty confident that they equally will abandon the idea that an organized refusal by workmen of social intercourse with a man who shall enter their antagonist's employ is wrong, if it is dissociated from any threat of violence, and is made for the sole object of prevailing, if possible, in a contest with their employer about the rate of wages. The fact that the immediate object of the act by which the benefit to themselves is to be gained is to injure their antagonist does not necessarily make it unlawful, any more than when a great house lowers the price of certain goods for the purpose, and with the effect, of driving a smaller antagonist from the business. Indeed, the question seems to me to have been decided as long ago as 1842 by the good sense of Chief Justice Shaw, in Commonwealth v. Hunt, 4 Met. 111. I repeat at the end, as I said at the beginning, that this is the point of difference in principle, and the only one, between the interlocutory and the final decree. See Regina v. Shepherd, 11 Cox C. C. 325; Connor v. Kent, Gibson v. Lawson, Curran v. Treleaven, 17 Cox C. C. 354. 849. MARTELL v. WHITE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT OF MASSACHUSETTS. 1904 185 Mass. 255, 69 N. E. 1085 TORT for alleged conspiracy to injure plaintiff's business. In the Superior Court, BISHOP, J., ordered a verdict for defendants, and plaintiff excepted. The evidence warranted the finding of the following facts, many of which were not in dispute. The plaintiff was engaged in a profitable business in quarrying granite and selling the same to granite workers in Quincy and vicinity. About January, 1899, his customers left him, and his business was ruined through the action of the defendants and their associates. The defendants were all members of a voluntary association known as the Granite Manufacturers' Association of Quincy, Mass., and some of them were on the executive committee. The association was composed of "such individuals, firms, or corporations as are, or are about to become manufacturers, quarriers, or polishers of granite." There was no constitution, and, while there were by-laws, still, except as hereinafter stated, there was in them no statement of the objects for which the association was formed. The by-laws provided among other things for the admission, suspension and expulsion of members, the election of officers, including an executive committee, and defined the respective powers and duties of the officers. One of the by-laws read as follows: "For the purpose of defraying in part the expense of the maintenance of this organization, any member thereof having business transactions with any party or concern in Quincy or its vicinity, not members hereof, and in any way relating to the cutting, quarrying, polishing, buying, or selling of granite (hand polishers excepted), shall for each of said transactions contribute at least $1 and not more than $500. The amount to be fixed by the association upon its determining the amount and nature of said transaction." Acting under the by-laws, the association investigated charges which were made against several of its members that they had purchased granite from a party "not a member" of the association. The charges were proved, and under the section above quoted it was voted that the offending parties "should respectively contribute to the funds of the association" the sums named in the votes. These sums ranged from $10 to $100. Only the contribution of $100 had been paid, but it is a fair inference that the proceedings to collect the others had been delayed only by reason of this suit. The party "not a member " was the present plaintiff, and the members of the association knew it. Most of the customers of the plaintiff were members of the association, and after these proceedings they declined to deal with him. This action on their part was due to the course of the association in compelling them to contribute as above stated, and to their fear that a similar vote for contribution would be passed should they continue to trade with the plaintiff. Chas. W. Bartlett and Elbridge R. Anderson for plaintiff. HAMMOND, J. [after stating the facts and inferences as above]: The jury might properly have found also that the euphemistic expression "shall contribute to the funds of the association" contained an idea which could be more tersely and accurately expressed by the phrase "shall pay a fine," or, in other words, that the plain intent of the section was to provide for the imposition upon those who came within its provisions of a penalty in the nature of a substantial fine. Here, then, is a clear and deliberate interference with the business of a person with the intention of causing damage to him and ending in that result. The defendants combined and conspired together to ruin the plaintiff in his business, and they accomplished their purpose. In all this have they kept within lawful bounds? . . In a case like this, where the injury is intentionally inflicted, the crucial question is whether there is justifiable cause for the act. If the injury be inflicted without just cause or excuse, then it is actionable. BOWEN, L. J., in Mogul Steamship Co. v. McGregor, 23 Q. B. D. 598, 613; Plant v. Woods, 176 Mass. 492. The justification must be as broad as the act and must cover not only the motive and the purpose, or in other words the object sought, but also the means used. 1. The defendants contend that both as to object and means they are justified by the law applicable to business competition. . . . From the by-laws it appears that none but persons engaged in the granite business can be members, and that a member transacting any business of this kind with a person not a member is liable to a fine. . . . It may be assumed that one of the objects was to enable the members to compete more successfully with others in the same business, and that the acts |