they speak well of her in their affidavits. Why, it is simply impossible to think for a moment of ordering that girl into the custody of her father, under the control of a woman who lived in open adultery with her father before he was divorced.

Now, with regard to the boy, the same thing may be said of him. He ought to have a father, of course. It is time he had a father. But how is he going to have one? Whose fault is it that he has not got a father right alongside of his mother to look after him every day? No fault but his father. The father is the man to blame for that. If the boy was older (I thought he was about 12 years old, but if the boy was older), I would seriously consider whether he had not got too big for his mother to control, and would seriously think of turning him over to his father; but he is not. He is not old enough to commence to learn business. He is not old enough to need the particular kind of instruction that Mr. Miller has very forcibly and very properly urged upon the court, and I am very much obliged to him for it. He has not attained those years yet. He is less than 11 years old. He has not got through his schooling, and is not fit to go to work, so to speak. I do not think he ought to be taken away from his mother. There is nothing that can compensate or equal the love of a mother; and when it appears, as in this case, that the mother was first a devoted and true wife, and is now a devoted and true mother, she may not be a model mother, she may not be a woman you would set up and say, "There, copy her"; but, so far as she has the capacity, she is a true mother of these children, and she is their own mother. She has a mother's affection and a mother's solicitude such as nobody else, except in very exceptional cases, can possibly have.

Now, under these circumstances, I am not ready to-day to make an order that that child should be taken from its mother. He is well situate. He is going on in school. He has his schoolmates. He is well situated, surrounded by a moral community where he is not exposed to temptation, and, take it altogether, I decline to make an order that the boy should be taken away from his mother.

Memorandum.-The father and older brother at once and in view of the court interviewed the younger boy, and apparently coaxed him to go with them, but without

success.

PITNEY, V. C. Shortly after I had refused on July 10, 1996, the application of the defendant for the custody of the two children remaining in the hands of their mother, the defendant applied to me orally and personally, and, as he said, on new grounds, to renew the application. I instructed him to take ex parte affidavits before any special master of the facts which he said arose since

the previous refusal just mentioned, and submit them to me with copies to be served on Mrs. Schultze. This he did. The copies were duly served, and Mrs. Schultze was directed to take answering affidavits and submit them to me. This she did, and I have considered them all, and will file them with the papers in the cause.

It is proper to say that I made personal inquiries of a special master residing in the neighborhood and acquainted with the character of Mrs. Rogers, the principal affiant upon which the defendant relies to sustain his application, and learned from him that she was not a person upon whose unsupported evidence, without an opportunity to cross-examine, it would be safe to rely. Upon a careful consideration of all these depositions, including my personal familiarity with the parties and the history of the cause from the beginning, I have concluded to make no order. In support of that conclusion I need only say that the allegations of the defendant are not, in my judgment, sustained. The witness in question took advantage of a fortuitous and entirely innocent circumstance to magnify it far beyond reasonable limits.

I will add that I have received one or two letters from the daughter which show her to be an intelligent and well-educated young lady, and disproves any allegation that she has been subjected to improper or noxious influences.

(72 N. J. Eq. 653)

GEORGE JONAS GLASS CO.. v. GLASS BOTTLE BLOWERS' ASS'N OF UNITED STATES AND CANADA et al. (Court of Chancery of New Jersey. May 20, 1907.)

1. INJUNCTION-CONSPIRACY-BOYCOTTING.

An organized attempt to induce the public to refrain from purchasing the products of a manufacturer, and to deprive him of a part of his trade market, commonly called "boycotting," having for its object the compelling of the manufacturer to unionize his business and the submission of its conduct to the regulations of a labor union, is an irreparable injury to his property, the continuance of which a court of equity will enjoin.

[Ed. Note.-For cases in point, see Cent. Dig. vol. 27, Injunction, §§ 174, 175.] 2. SAME-PICKETING.

A combination or agreement to picket a manufacturing plant for the purpose of interfering with the free flow of labor to an employer, to whom labor is a necessity for the carrying on of his business, which, if successful, will prevent him from obtaining the means of pursuing a lawful occupation, and the sole purpose of which is to compel him to comply with the demands of an antagonistic power, is a conspiracy against the property rights of the employer, subjecting his property to an irreparable injury, and all parties to such compact, actors as well as abettors, will be restrained from establishing and maintaining such picket service.

[Ed. Note. For cases in point, see Cent. Dig. vol. 27, Injunction, §§ 174, 175.]

3. SAME.

A labor organization seeking to compel a manufacturer to unionize his plant is not such a competitor in the labor market as to justify it in enticing employés to leave the service of their master, or to induce persons seeking employment with him from so doing, when the enticer does not employ labor. The competition which the law upholds must be honest competition, and not a malicious attempt to injure another.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Bill for injunction by The George Jonas Glass Company against the Glass Bottle Blowers' Association of United States and Canada, William M. Doughty, and others. Injunction granted.

Hampton & Fithian and John W. Harding, for complainant. Louis H. Miller and John

W. Wescott, for defendants.

BERGEN, V. C. This controversy arises over an attempt of the principal defendant, the Glass Bottle Blowers' Association of the United States and Canada and its officers, who are also defendants, to compel the complainant to "unionize its factory." The association is not incorporated, but a voluntary society made up of a number of persons who act as its officers, and control, through the medium of what is described as "local unions," a certain class of workers in glass blowing factories who are willing to join the organization. The executive officers annually confer with the representatives of such factories as consent to be unionized, and together they fix the rate of wages to be paid, and the general conduct of the manufacturer's business for the coming season, and the result of this conference is com municated to the local unions, who are supposed to comply therewith. It appears in this case that the association had in 1901 succeeded in unionizing and bringing under its control the management of all factories in New Jersey doing a business similar to that of complainant, save that of the complainant and one other which is managed by the persons interested in complainant's business. The complainant's factory since 1896 had been a subject of annoyance and dissatisfaction to the association because Mr. Jonas, its president and principal owner had persistently refused to subject his business to the management and control of this self-constituted monitor, and, after an attempt to boycott the business of the complainant had failed to drive it into the union, a strike was declared at the works of the complainant located at Minotola, in the county of Atlantic, in this state on the 9th day of April, 1902, whereupon the employés of the complainant, to the number of approximately 300, left the employment of the complainant, leased a lot of land in the immediate neighborhood of the factory, and procured and set up a large tent, in which the strikers congregated, which was afterwards replaced, at the expense of the defendant association, by a substantial wooden structure used for

the same purpose. While the officers of the association deny that they instigated the strike, they all admit that immediately upon fts declaration some of them took the management and direction of the men who were engaged in it. The complainant charges that. by violence, threats, and opprobrious epithets, the officers of the association, and the men whose actions they were directing, intimidated persons seeking employment at its factory, and prevented them from doing so; that the strike was the culminating effort of the officers of this association to drive it to the wall, and compel it to submit to their dictation; and, further, that, although restrained by an order of this court made in this cause when the bill of complaint was filed they have desisted from acts of physical violence. a cordon of pickets guard all the highways leading to complainant's factory, by whom all persons seeking employment there were, at the time the evidence in this cause was taken, subjected to ridicule, opprobrious epithets, and open or implied threats; that such picketing is a violation of its constitutional right to conduct its business in a legal way according to its own methods, resulting in injury to its business and the destruction of its property.

Before entering upon the consideration of the case, I take occasion to say that it is not intended, by anything that may appear in this opinion, to question the right of proper organization for lawful purposes, nor the right of any one to peaceably state his side of a controversy provided it be what it pretends to be and is done without threats, or show of force, or in any manner, or under any conditions, which may fairly indicate that a threat is intended either to person or property, yet it is not necessary that the deterrent force be threatening words. Acts are sometimes more effective than words, but words or acts, which, taken in connection with the surrounding circumstances are intended to intimidate, and which naturally would deter an ordinary person from proceeding to obtain work from one entitled to employ him are not peaceable persuasions, for they interfere with "the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right of private property," the enjoyment and pursuit of which is guarantied to every citizen by the Constitution of the state and the law of the land.

In 1892 George Jonas established at Minotola a factory for the manufacture of glass bottles, and conducted the business as an individual until 1897, when the complaining company was incorporated under the laws of this state, and the property transferred to it. When the plant was located, no village existed, but a considerable tract of land was purchased, and the necessary manufacturing buildings put up, as well as a number of dwelling houses, which were rented to the employés of the company, so that in April, 1902, the company had invested about $300,

000 in land, machinery, merchandise, and buildings, 47 of the latter being tenant houses. In the year 1896 one George W. Brannin, a member of the executive committee of the defendant association, called upon Mr. Jonas, at Minotola, and had a conversation with him about unionizing the factory, without any agreement being reached. In 1899 Brannin again visited Jonas, and told him that they expected to unionize the different glass factories in South Jersey, and "they had gotten our men, some of them, to go out with them, and he thought it would be to our best interest to unionize the plant." Brannin made no threats, and his conduct during both interviews appears to have been confined to an attempt to demonstrate to Mr. Jonas that it would be of advantage to the complainant to run its factory under the rules and regulations of the association; one of these rules being that complainant should only employ one apprentice to 15 journeymen, while nearly all of the men then employed by it were apprentices. Shortly after this, according to the testimony of Mr. Jonas, about 20 of the men employed by the complainant left, and took employment elsewhere, one of them exhibiting to Mr. Jonas a card, signed by Mr. Hayes, the president of the association; this card, as I gather from the evidence, being a certificate of the association that the party holding it was a member of the union, and entitled to work in any union shop. The first move made by the association to coerce the complainant into a compliance with its wishes was an attempt to induce the firm of Whittemore Bros. Company, of Boston, Mass., to withdraw its patronage from the complainant. This firm, who were manufacturers of shoe polish and blacking, had entered into a contract with the complainant for the manufacture of bottles for use in their business amounting to about $35,000, and in October, 1901, the association issued and circulated generally in the United States and Canada a circular letter signed by Dennis A. Hayes, its president, addressed, "To our Brethren in the Labor Movement, Greeting," portions of which read as follows: "The Glass Bottle Blowers' Association of the United States and Canada request your attention to the following statement: For fifteen years we have been fighting nonunionism and company stores in New Jersey. There are

two nonunion concerns remaining. The principal one is operated by the George Jonas Glass Company. * * The factories at Minotola are operated almost exclusively on bottles for the Whittemore Bros. Company, Boston, Mass., manufacturers of shoe and leather dressing, and, if we could secure the withdrawal of this order, we might make terms with the George Jonas Glass Com pany. We have appealed several times to the Whittemore people, and later Mr. James Duncan, first vice president of the American Federation of Labor, called on them a number of times, in relation to the matter, but

his efforts and ours were alike unavailing. The firm ignore our appeal. Thus it has been placed on the unfair list of the A. F. of L., and we hope you will bear this in mind when about to have your shoes blacked, or whenever buying shoe polish or leather dressing of any kind. We would feel under many obligations if you would appoint committees to wait on business men who handle this line of goods, and also write to the Whittemore Bros. Company, No. 237 Albany Street, Boston, Mass., asking them to withdraw their patronage from the concern at Minotola. * We want this firm to realize that organized labor is a power, and that its efforts to assist and protect the helpless and oppressed cannot be lightly turned aside." The response to this circular was prompt and effective, for letters were mailed from all parts of the country to the Whittemore Bros. Company, of which over 150 have been put in evidence, the result being that Whittemore Bros. Company refused to observe their contract with the complainant, which was thus deprived of a market for its goods of great value. One of these letters written January 3, 1902, from Canton, Ohio, which reflects the average expression of all, reads in part as follows. "P. S. We have a strong union city, and they claim that you buy your bottles from the George Jonas Glass Co., of Minotola, N. J. If such is the case, I must ask that you cancel my spring order, but as you know as well as I (or better) will you please write me a letter to hand over to committee of labor, etc., see do not give me away. Say what there is in it. I cannot use your goods while the 'ban' is on. I will not try-Send letter if you wish, to be read in council. I will not use goods unless the ban is raised." It also appears that, after the bill of complaint was filed in this cause, the defendant association continued its boycott against the complainant by sending letters to its customers, notifying them that it was known they were having their bottles made at Minotola, and after stating that revelations of the most appalling character had been made regarding the working of children, and that "two mere babies, worked In open defiance of the law by the George Jonas Company, were killed in the most sickening manner," continued: "That they had decided to put three men on the road, also to establish a press bureau for the purpose of giving to the public the information necessary to enable them to withhold their patronage" from parties using the product of the complainant. In order to indicate the character of the boycott inaugurated and carried on by the defendant association, the following letter is pertinent. "Menard Liniment Company, Boston, Mass.-Gentlemen: In re abuse of children by Jonas et al., some time since we wrote you calling attention to your responsibility for wrongs therein complained of. Are we to understand from your silence that you wish us to publish to the world that

you indorse and stand for the slaughter of the innocents? Very truly, E. A. Agard." The evidence in this cause abundantly proves that the defendant association attempted to establish a boycott against the goods manufactured by the complainant, and so far succeeded as to cause it a serious loss of property, for the sole purpose of compelling the complainant to unionize its factory, or, in other words, to submit the conduct of its business to the demands of the association. Such conduct has been declared by this court to be unlawful, a conclusion which meets my hearty approval. Martin v. McFall, 65 N. J. Eq. 91, 55 Atl. 465.

The next important step taken by the association to accomplish its purpose was the sending of a letter to the complainant, signed by Dennis A. Hayes, the president of the association, bearing date March 27, 1902, in which he states that he has been requested by the workmen of complainant "to seek a conference with you, to, so far as possible, correct those grievances and unionize your factory." In ascertaining the real purpose of this letter, it must be borne in mind that Hayes testifies that at this time none of the employés of the complainant were members of his association; that he then had no special interest in them, because many of them had taken the places of those who had participated in the strike, and left the complainant in 1899. The only request made in this letter on behalf of the workmen is that they should be conceded such wages and privileges as unionized factories were paying and allowing, under an agreement with the association. Therefore it is quite apparent that this letter was only another step looking to the compelling of the complainant to submit to the association, for the wages and privileges, the absence of which is described as a grievance, were mere incidents of the control by the association of complainant's business; for, once unionized, the other results would follow, and the conclusion is justified that, under a pretense of benefiting labor, these officers were seeking power, and attempting to establish a monopoly that would stifle competition between workmen desiring to labor in that line, for it is not denied that the number of apprentices under union rules is restricted for the purpose of keeping to the minimum the supply of skilled labor. The complainant refused to unionize its factory, and on April 9, 1902, about two weeks after this letter was written, over 300 of complainant's workmen left its employ, and a strike was declared, which has been since maintained under the direction and management of some of the principal officers of the association, with the avowed object of compelling complainant to unionize.

The present proceeding was instituted by the complainant to have the defendants among whom are numerous of its former workmen, enjoined from boycotting its business; inducing its employés by threats, intim

idation, force, violence, or the payment of money to refuse to perform their duties or leave its service, or, by like methods, preventing those who desire to do so from entering its employment, and also from using indecent and opprobrious epithets to its officers and employés; from collecting singly or in combination with others with the intention of picketing the public highways leading to its factory for the purpose of inducing laborers not to take employment with it; from gathering at railroad stations at or near complainant's works, and inducing or attempting to induce persons arriving at such stations seeking employment at complainant's factory from so doing, and generally from bribing or intimidating workmen to refrain from entering complainant's employment, or inducing those who are employed to leave.

The principal officers of the defendant association have been called, and they all deny that they instigated the strike; but such denials have little weight when considered in connection with their previous and subse quent conduct, for it is quite clear from the evidence that months before the strike occurred they had been engaged in an effort to bend complainant to the will of their association, and employed all the resources of a rich, powerful, and well-organized society to deprive the complainant of a market for its goods, and to accomplish the destruction of its business in default of its submission to their will, when failing in such efforts, this strike was declared a strike which the offcers of this association are immediately found to be directing and controlling, and in furtherance of which the association for a long period, if not to the present time, has paid the wages not only of the men who left the factory, but of strangers brought from other places to lead and direct the strikers. The first demonstration after the strike was declared was a parade led by the defendant Doughty, the vice president of the association. preceded by a band of music, and Mr. Hayes, the president of the association, was so promptly on the ground that the suspicion is justified that he had knowledge of what was coming. The testimony of the witness Edward C. Rush shows that some time prior to this strike meetings of the workmen were held at Vineland, which he attended, and that the defendants Doughty and Launer, another officer of the association, were present at different times and addressed the meetings, advising the men to organize and keep still about it, and that “they would take care of them and pay them good wages if they went out." I am satisfied from the evidence that this strike was promoted by the officers of this association in pursuance of their conceived scheme to compel the complainant to unionize its factory. I believe that Mr. Hayes told the truth when he testified that he had no interest in the workmen before the strike, because they had taken the places of

other strikers, and am satisfied that he used these men as a means to accomplish his long cherished purpose; that it was a war of conquest, not for the relief of the downtrodden, as he now seeks to convince us; and that the officers of this association are as directly responsible for the acts of violence and unlawful conduct of these men as if they had actually participated in each of them. I give little credit to, and have no respect for, men who inaugurate a movement which they know they cannot control, and then seek to excuse themselves because they have advised, as they say, a body of men, many of them ignorant Italians, against the doing of unlawful acts, when common sense and ordinary experience teaches that a body of idle workmen, called together at a common rendezvous, such as this association provided, pay no attention to moral precepts communicated for the purpose of being used as a defense when called upon to respond for the acts of a disorderly mob. If these men had been advised to return to their homes and act as orderly law-abiding citizens, simply exercising their right to quit work, a different situation would have been presented, but, on the contrary, they were gathered at a place provided by the officers of the defendant association for no possible reason except to make a show of force, the known effect of which would be to arouse the fears of others desiring to remain at work, or to take the places of those who had left, and whose continued employment would endanger the success of the result sought to be accomplished. The parties who start a conflagration are, and should be, responsible for its consequences.

The testimony in this case is too voluminous to permit of a particular analysis. It is enough to say that I find that acts of violence were committed; that terror reigned in this village for several days; that peaceable citizens seeking to obtain work were met on the public highways by large bodies of these strikers and turned back; that persons seeking to move into the town were stopped on the public highway, and only permitted to proceed through the interference of a peace officer; that private dwellings were visited by bands of men for the purpose of deterring persons desiring to continue work from doing so; that one of the employés who returned to work was assassinated, all attempts to discover the perpetrator being futile, because of the conditions existing, and all of this done, it is claimed, in the interest of organized labor, a claim which, in my judgment, no class of men will be more swift to repudiate than the fair-minded members of the labor organizations of the country.

A part of the argument submitted by counsel relates to the question whether the laborers were justified in striking. With that question I conceive the court has nothing to do. Men have a right to cease work whenever they choose, with or without a reason. If they violate a contract, the master has his

legal remedy in damages; and, so long as workmen abandoning work disperse and behave as quiet orderly citizens, they are only exercising their rights, but when by force, or intimidation, they undertake to deter those who are willing to work from so doing, they violate the law of the land. On the argu

ment counsel for the defendants admitted that violence, intimidation, and all unlawful interference with persons seeking employment with the complainant was an illegal infringement of its property rights, and rested their defense on this branch of the case upon a denial that the conditions which I have found to exist did exist, and I have no hesitation in declaring that such conduct should be restrained.

There is still another branch of this case to be considered, and that is the placing of men, two or three in number, on the highways leading into Minotola, for the alleged purpose of peaceably persuading laborers from seeking employment with the complainant. After very carefully considering this question, I am of opinion that the complainant is entitled to have the defendants restrained from establishing or continuing such picketing, for the only purpose to be served is to intercept persons coming to seek employment with the complainant, and a court should judge of the right to maintain that sort of surveillance over a complainant's business, according to its evident intent and purpose. In its mildest form it is a nuisance, and to compel a manufacturer to have the natural flow of labor to his employment sifted by a self-constituted antagonistic committee whose very presence upon the highway for such purpose is deterrent is just as destructive of his property as is a boycott which prevents the sale of his product. As was well said by Judge McPherson, speaking for the United States Circuit Court: "There is and can be no such thing as peaceful picketing, any more than there can be chaste vulgarity, or peaceful mobbing, or lawful lynching." Atch. T. & S. F. Ry. Co. V. Gee (C. C.) 139 Fed. 582-584. The single object sought to be obtained by picketing is to prevent the complainant from continuing its business by depriving it of one of its essential necessities, namely, labor; for, if the picketing has not that object, the reason for maintaining pickets would not exist. That a person who has left his employer may approach another and, if he is willing to listen, tell him the truth regarding the conditions existing, does not meet the question being considered, because in this case there is a well-defined scheme in which a number of persons have joined to prevent the complainant from carrying on his business. It is not a case where the individual on his own behalf is taking his grievance to a willing listener, but a combination of men, backed by great wealth, conspiring to deprive the complainant of the means of carrying on its business, with the hope that it