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< | 19th Century Labor Law: Commonwealth v. Hunt, Its Precedents, and Its Progeny
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> | Commonwealth v. Hunt | | | | |
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< | 19th Century Labor Combination Jurisprudence Preceding Hunt | >
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> | Labor Combination Law Preceding Hunt | | | The history of labor disputes in America substantially precedes the revolutionary period. In 1636, for instance, there was a fishermen’s strike on an island off the coast of Maine and in 1677 twelve carmen were fined for going on strike in New York City. However, most instances of labor unrest during the colonial period were temporary and isolated, and rarely resulted in the formation of permanent groups of laborers for negotiation purposes. Little legal recourse was available to those injured by the unrest, because strikes were not typically considered illegal. The only known case of criminal prosecution of workers in the colonial era occurred as a result of a carpenters’ strike in Savannah, Georgia in 1746.
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| | | However, Levy’s statement incorrectly characterizes the case law in American prior to Hunt. Pullis was actually unusual in strictly following the English common law and holding that a combination to raise wages was by itself illegal. More often combination cases prior to Hunt did not hold that unions were illegal per se, but rather found some other justification for a conviction. After Pullis in 1806, eighteen other prosecutions of laborers for conspiracies followed within the next three decades. However, only one such case, People v. Fisher, also held that a combination for the purpose of raising wages was illegal. Several other cases held that the methods used by the unions, rather than the unions themselves, were illegal. For instance, in People v. Melvin, cordwainers were again convicted of a conspiracy to raise wages. Unlike in Pullis, however, the court held that the combination’s existence itself was not unlawful, but nevertheless reached a conviction because the cordwainers had refused to work for any master who paid lower wages, or with any laborer who accepted lower wages, than what the combination had stipulated. The court held that methods used to obtain higher wages would be unlawful if they were judged to be deleterious to the general welfare of the community. Commonwealth v. Morrow continued to refine this standard, stating that, “an agreement of two or more to the prejudice of the rights of others or of society” would be illegal. Another line of cases, led by Justice John Gibson of the Supreme Court Pennsylvania’s decision in Commonwealth v. Carlisle, held that motive of the combination, rather than simply its existence, was the key to illegality. Gibson wrote, “Where the act is lawful for an individual, it can be the subject of a conspiracy, when done in concert, only where there is a direct intention that injury shall result from it.” Still other courts rejected Pullis’ rule of per se illegality in favor of a rule that asked whether the combination was a but-for cause of injury. Thus, as economist Edwin Witte stated, “[T]he doctrine that a combination to raise wages is illegal was allowed to die by common consent. No leading case was required for its overthrow.” Nevertheless, while Hunt was not the first case to hold that labor combinations were legal, it was the first to do so explicitly and in clear terms.
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> | Trial and Appeal | | | Background | | | Whatever Shaw’s motivation, his opinion in Hunt provided a clear statement that labor combinations which used legal means to achieve legal ends were lawful. | |
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> | Significance | | | The degree of Hunt’s impact is a matter of some debate. Levy notes that in the forty years after Hunt was decided, the case was served as the authoritative statement of the law on labor combinations. However, as favorable as Hunt was for labor unions, its holding still left the door open for courts to convict strikers by declaring certain labor activity criminal, or by holding the purpose of a strike to be an unlawful interference with private enterprise. Also, Witte notes that there were limited opportunities to apply Hunt until the end of the Civil War. Witte was able to find only three conspiracy cases brought anywhere in the United States between 1842 and 1863.
However, between 1863 and 1880 the pace of conspiracy indictments picked up again. At least fifteen cases were brought during that time. Despite Hunt’s softening of the conspiracy doctrine, convictions were still obtained and harsh sentences imposed. For instance, in 1869, members of a mine committee in Pottsville, Pennsylvania were found guilty of conspiracy, sentenced to jail for thirty days and heavily fined. Prosecutions in this period led to labor efforts to gain relief through legislation. In 1869, Pennsylvania passed a statute declaring labor unions legal if formed for “mutual aid, benefit, and protection” and when convictions continued to be obtained, passed another law in 1872 providing that laborers could collectively refuse to work for any employer. The need for such legislation suggests that Hunt, while beneficial for labor, was hardly a guarantee that that workers would be able to organize without fear of legal repercussion.
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> | Primary Sources
1. Articles written about Commonwealth v. Hunt from the Boston Morning Post, a former Whig newspaper published in Boston, published in late October, 1840. These are included in the table of attached documents at the bottom of the page. I was able to take photographs of the newspaper at the New York Historical Society Library. The Boston Morning Post, which eventually became the Boston Post, was a popular daily newspaper in Boston and New England for over one hundred years before it closed in 1956. The paper was founded in 1831 by Boston businessmen Charles G. Greene and Williams Beals. Post was founded in November 1831 by two prominent Boston businessmen, Charles G. Greene and William Beals.
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2. Handwritten notes of Thomas Lloyd from the case Commonwealth v. Pullis, one of the important precedents to Commonwealth v. Hunt. (I'll have more on this in a few days).
* CommonwealthvPullis_LloydNotes.pdf: Shorthand Notes of Thomas Lloyd on the case Commonwealth v. Pullis | | |
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