with him”—­Smith is bound to be ruined.  The common law early recognized this importance of the principle of combination, and therefore it was part of the English common law and is still, barring one recent statute, that a combination to injure a person, although by an act which if done by one individual would be lawful, is nevertheless an unlawful combination; that is, a conspiracy under the law; for all “conspiracies” are unlawful, under the law; the meaning of the word conspiracy in the law is, not an innocent combination, but a guilty one, and anything which is a conspiracy at law can be punished criminally, or will give rise to civil suits for damages by the parties injured, or usually entitle one to the protection of an injunction.  A conspiracy, therefore, is not only a guilty combination, of two or more persons, for an unlawful end by any means, or for a lawful end by unlawful means, but also one for an immoral end, a malicious end, as, let us say, the ruin of a third person, or the injury of the public.  All the dispute about the law of conspiracy and the statutes and what laborers can do and what employers can do to-day really hinges about that last clause.  The labor leaders, the radicals, want to say that nothing shall be a conspiracy where the end is not unlawful and where the acts done are such as, if done by an individual, would not be wrong.  In other words, they want statutes to provide that nothing is a conspiracy where the acts done are in themselves lawful if done by one individual.  But this English conspiracy law was of the most immense sociological value, in that it did recognize the tremendous power of combination.  It said, although you don’t have to trade with Smith alone, yet a combination of a great many individuals for the purpose of ruining Smith, by all simultaneously refusing to trade with him, is such a tremendous injury to Smith that the law will take cognizance of it and hold that kind of a combination to be unlawful.

This definition should be further extended, perhaps, to remind you that the courts hold that there are certain kinds of combinations, contemplating ends which will necessarily result in the use of unlawful means; the most familiar example is picketing.  The courts mostly hold that although in theory a labor union can march up and down the highway and peacefully advise non-union men or other laborers not to take their jobs, in practice such action usually, if not necessarily, goes to the point of intimidation; and intimidation is nearly always made unlawful by statute.  Now I should only add that it is very important to remember—­and even the courts do not always remember it—­that the thing being punished as a conspiracy is not the end, but the combining; the conspiracy itself is the criminal act.  Suppose in Pennsylvania one thousand men meet and say:  “John Smith has taken a job and is a scab, and we will go around and maul him to-night,” and they do, or they don’t; if they are tried, the