There can be no question, except in the minds of those utterly unfamiliar with the tropics and Southern conditions generally, of the difficulty of this labor problem throughout the world.  It has appeared not only in our Southern States but in the West Indies and South Africa—­in any country where colored labor is employed.  The writer knows of at least one large plantation in the South where many hundred negroes were employed to get in the cotton crops, and the employer was careful never to deliver their letters until the season had terminated; for on the merest invitation to attend a ball or a wedding in some neighboring county, the bulk of the help would leave for that purpose and might or might not return.  Railway labor is not so difficult, because the workmen commonly work in gangs under an overseer who usually assumes, if he is not vested with, some physical authority; but the case of the individual farmer who is trusted upon his own exertions to till a field or get in the crop seems to be almost impossible of regulation under a strict English common-law system.  Farming on shares appears to be almost equally unsatisfactory.  The farmer gets his subsistence, but the share of the proprietor in the crop produced is almost inappreciable.

In closing this chapter reference should be made to a large amount of American legislation, most of which was absolutely unnecessary as merely embodying the common law.  Still it has its use in extending the definition of the “unlawful act.”  It will be remembered that one of the three branches of conspiracy was the combination to effect a lawful end by unlawful acts.  Now many of the States have statutes declaring even threats, or intimidation without physical violence, to be such unlawful act.  It may possibly be doubted whether it might not have been so held at the common law; but such legislation has always the advantage of getting a uniform line of decisions from all the judges.  The New York statute passed many years ago may serve as a sample:  It provides in substance that any threat or intimidation or abusive epithets or the hiding of tools or clothes, when done even by one individual, is an unlawful act; therefore when strikers, although engaged in a lawful strike, as to raise their own wages, or any one of them, intend or do any such act, they become guilty of unlawful conspiracy.

This is probably the only legislation on such matters which adds anything to the common law.  Many of the States, usually Western States—­apt to be more forgetful of the common law than the older Commonwealths—­have been at pains to pass statutes against blacklists.  Such statutes are entirely unnecessary, but as they relate to combinations they will be considered in the next chapter.