forgetfulness of historical legislation and the early common law, they have gone from one extreme to the other, often with a trivial consideration of the importance of the points involved, and always with an entire absence of a universal point of view, of that genius which grasps a question in its entirety and is not confused by irrelevant details.  It is only of late when the matter has come before the Federal Supreme Court and the courts of a few States which have been educated by a frequent recurrence of disputes of this sort that we begin again to see the principle clearly, as I shall venture to lay it down here:  that the acts of a number of persons combined are to be judged by their intent.  In individual acts the intent is of no importance except as it turns an accident into a crime; chance-medley for instance into murder, or mere asportation into larceny, or ordinary conversation into slander; yet these few instances serve to show how universal is the recognition of intent in the law and how little difficulty it presents.  Juries have very rarely any difficulty in determining this question of intent in individual acts; and in like manner they will have no difficulty when it is recognized as the fundamental test in cases of combination, i.e., conspiracy.  And for the antiquity of this our law we need but mention a few cases:  Rex v. Crispe, cited in the Great Case of Monopolies (7 State Trials 513):”  Here was lately an agreement between copperas makers and copperas merchants for the buying of all copperas, and that these copperas makers shall for three years make at so much a ton and restraining them from selling to others”—­held a criminal conspiracy; of the tailors of Ipswich (6 Coke 103) where a company of tailors made a by-law to exclude non-members from exercising their trade; and the Lilleshall case (see p. 71 above).

Thus in matters of capital:  is the first intent, the immediate object, to increase profits, to acquire or enjoy property, to enlarge one’s business,[1] or is the first intention to destroy a competitor or create a monopoly?  So in labor combinations:  is the first object to get better terms for the persons combining, an increase of wages or a reduction of hours, improved conditions in factories and shops, etc., etc., or is the first thing they are seeking to do to injure a third person, not concerned in the dispute, or to control the liberty and constitutional right of the employer himself?  If the latter, it is “oppression” within the meaning of the early common law, and should be so held to-day.

[Footnote 1:  What Mr. Cooke calls, in his preface, “the natural incident or outgrowth of some lawful relation.” Combination, Monopolies and Labor Unions, p. iv.]