PREFACE.

The present treatise is based upon, rather than a new edition of, "The Law of Trade and Labor Combinations," published in 1898.

Assimilation of the considerable mass of subsequent decisions has involved a re-examination of the fundamental theories advanced in the former treatise, with the result of an increased conviction on my part of their soundness.

As before, I employ the classification of Combinations Producing Private Injury and Combinations Producing Public Injury. Although the distinction between these classes is too broad to have escaped general notice, yet there continues much vagueness of conception as to the precise distinction, and this I have endeavored to make clear.

Considering first, Combinations Producing Private Injury, the confusion and conflict in the decisions relating thereto seems to me to be caused by the attempts to give effect to intent (that is, malicious intent or malice) and combination as elements of liability. The test of malicious intent has been authoritatively repudiated in England, and to a large extent in this country. Although the test of combination, that survival of the medieval doctrine of criminal conspiracy, continues to be largely accepted in this country and was recently countenanced by the House of Lords, it seems, as to the class of cases to which it is principally applicable, to have been repudiated by statute in England. That is to say, by the Trade Disputes Act of 1906, "an act done in pursuance of an agreement or combination by two or more persons shall, if done in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute, not be actionable unless the act, if done without any such agreement or combination, would be actionable." A like provision was enacted in California in 1903, and I com