The opinion perhaps announces no new principles and its conclusions are logical and natural and inevitable deductions from the opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the cases of In re Debs 158 U. S. 564, Loewe v. Lawlor 208 U. S. 274, Duplex Printing Company v. Deering 254 U. S. 443 and others of similar nature; nonetheless, the facts that so sweeping a decision was rendered and that such an injunction was issued and, above all, that, in these days of social unrest and in this era of wavering party allegiance and control and the consequent necessity of considering political consequences, such an injunction was asked for at all are full of social and governmental significance. The filing of the bill, indeed, must have been the result of a belief similar to that which was entertained by Lloyd George during the recent mine and railroad employees' strikes in England and by both the Democratic and Republican administrations in the recent strikes in the coal industry in this country, that, powerful as the unions that are directly interested in the transportation and the coal industries may be, the stagnation or suspension of these industries would mean the complete paralysis of all of our industries and of all of our means of comfort and of sustaining life and would result in a universal destitution and lack of employment which would of necessity be and be looked upon as a public nuisance and which even labor itself could hardly tolerate. There was indeed a deliberate counting of the costs and a firm belief that as a matter of last resort the force of the country (and after all as a matter of last resort all government is founded on force) would stand behind the injunctions and render the court decrees enforcible, or, and fortunately in the past this has been the hope of the courts and this hope has been realized, that organized labor would itself realize the necessity of a government by law; would recognize the public sentiment and the public desire. and would yield obedience to the decrees as an expression of that public sentiment without daring the ultimate issue and throwing down the gage of battle.

The legal importance of the decision under consideration is that it definitely asserts the right and the duty of the federal courts, as guardians of the public weal and as representatives of the parens patrie, to keep open the highways of interstate communication and to enjoin not only actual physical obstructions or actual physical violence, but even peaceable conspiracies to strike and to instigate strikes which by unmanning the railroads accomplish the same result.

It is true that the opinion lays particular stress upon various acts of sabotage, but it does not content itself with merely prohibiting such or the advising or counselling the same. It takes the sweeping position

"that if the dominating primary purpose of a combination is to restrain trade or to do things unlawful in themselves and which by reason of their inherent nature operate to restrain, such purpose is unlawful and may not be carried out even by means that otherwise would be lawful."

It reaffirms the broad interpretation of the case of Loewe v. Lawlor 208 U. S. 274, which in turn reaffirms the case of In re Debs 158 U. S. 564, and which said:

"The Circuit Court (in the Debs case) proceeded principally upon the Sherman Anti-Trust Law and granted an injunction. In this court the case was rested upon the broader ground that the federal government had full power over interstate commerce and over the transmission of the mails and in the exercise of those powers could remove everything put upon highways, natural or artificial, to obstruct the passage of interstate commerce or the carrying the mails."

It then applies the principle to the case at bar and makes the sweeping and perhaps epoch-making announcement:

"Certainly an obstruction which results from blocking the tracks or tearing up the rails does not differ in substance from an obstruction which results from preventing the maintenance of rolling stock and equipment and thereby destroying instruments by which passengers and property are carried over the rails. Nor can the Debs case be differentiated because the strike was called in aid of a boycott. The ground of jurisdiction asserted in the Debs case was the obstruction of interstate commerce and the mails, not the motive which actuated those who created the obstruction."

Perhaps, however, its most significant portion is that which relates to Sections 6 and 20 of the Clayton Act, which were the result of so much effort on the part of organized labor and on which organized labor has so strongly relied. These sections provide:

"Section 6: That the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. Nothing contained in the anti-trust laws shall be construed to forbid the existence and operation of labor, agricultural or horticultural organizations, instituted for the purposes of mutual help, and not having capital stock or conducted for profit, or to forbid or restrain individual members of such organizations from lawfully carrying out the legitimate objects thereof, nor shall such organizations, or the members thereof, be held or construed to be illegal combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade under the anti-trust laws."

"Section 20: That no restraining order or injunction shall be granted by any court of the United States or a judge or the judges thereof, in any case between an employer and employees, or between employees or between persons employed and persons seeking employment, involved or growing out of a dispute concerning terms or conditions of employment, unless necessary to prevent irreparable injury to property, or to a property right of the party making the application, for which injury there is no adequate remedy at law, and such property or property right must be described with particularity in the application, which must be in writing and sworn to by the applicant or by his agent or attorney.

"And no such restraining order or injunction shall prohibit any person or persons, whether singly or in concert, from terminating any relation of employment or from ceasing to perform any work or labor, or from recommending, advising or persuading others by peaceful means so to do, or from attending at any place where any such person or persons may lawfully be for the purpose of peacefully obtaining or communicating information or from peacefully persuading any person

to work or to abstain from working; or from ceasing to patronize or employ any party to such dispute, or from recommending, advising or persuading others by peaceful and lawful means so to do, or from paying or giving to or from withholding from any person engaged in such dispute any strike benefits or other moneys or things of value; or from peaceably assembling in lawful manner and for lawful purposes; or from doing any act or things which might lawfully be done in the absence of such dispute by any party thereto; nor shall any of the acts specified in this paragraph be considered or held to be violations of any law of the United States."

In its syllabus the court lays down the emphatic rule that "as against the public, restraint of trade may not be adopted as a weapon in industrial warfare." It holds, and in this it is supported by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Duplex Printing Company v. Deering 254 U. S. 467, that the controlling clause of the Clayton Act is the clause "may lawfully do," and that never and at any time may any man or any body of men lawfully conspire to close the avenues of interstate communication. It holds that though it may be true that, under the extraordinary class legislation of the Clayton Act, as a general rule picketing, striking and counseling and advising strikes and primary (though not secondary, see Loewe v. Lawlor, supra) boycotts may not be made the objects of injunctions, these things must be done and counselled for a lawful purpose and within the limitations of the act, that is to say, in order to better the condition of the employees immediately concerned and in a controversy directly between employer and employee, and that the creation of a public nuisance never has been and never can be a lawful purpose. It holds, and properly, that the welfare of the public is intimately connected with the keeping open and the operation of the railroads of the country, and that acts and things which are done with the main purpose of interfering therewith are acts and things which tend to the creation. of such a nuisance and are therefore unlawful. Whatever, indeed, may have been the real intention of the framers of the Clayton Act or of those who voted for its passage and however organized labor may have been lead to believe that in it there was a complete surrender to its wishes, Judge Wilkerson (and in this he appears to be sustained by the logic of the authorities) will assume no such surrender and no such unsocial purpose.

The logic of the opinion is convincing and its sound public policy hardly can be questioned. It is the natural result of the situation and of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States which have gone before. The policy which is therein announced and the construction of the Clayton Act which is therein. contained is absolutely necessary to the operation of our interstate lines of communication and to our national prosperity, but whether the Supreme Court of the United States will later on repudiate that logic or the federal Congress will bid defiance thereto remains to be seen.

A. A. B.

ATTACHMENT-CONSTRUCTION OF SECTION 31 OF ATTACHMENT ACT-PROCEEDINGS IN AID OF ASSUMPSIT FOR UNLIQUIDATED DAMAGES.—In Hoosier Veneer Co. v. Trusts & Guarantee Co., Ltd. 283 Fed. 1, the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit addresses itself to the question whether, under the Illinois statute, an attachment in aid may be had in an action of assumpsit sounding in unliquidated damages. The argument in the negative was that Section 31 of the Attachment Act in granting an attachment in aid "in any action of assumpsit, debt, covenant, trespass or trespass on the case" does so upon condition of the plaintiff's affidavit showing "the right to attachment under the first section of this Act," that is to say, the section declaring the conditions of original attachment. Inasmuch as Section 1, it was further argued, permits an attachment only "when the indebtedness exceeds $20," Section 31 can only be called into operation when there is an indebtedness, or, in other words, a liquidated sum due to the plaintiff. Whether the word "indebtedness" in Section 1 is to be given the meaning assigned to it in this argument is not entirely clear. In American Lumber Co. v. Leach, 207 Ill. App. 62, the Appellate Court for the First District-opinion by Mr. Justice O'Connor-takes occasion, by way of dictum, to review the previous course of decision and concludes that the precise question has never been passed upon by the Supreme Court It finds, moreover, that the only Appellate Court case actually involving the point is Steele-Wedeles Co. v. Shoodoc Pond & Packing Co., in the Second District, 153 Ill. App. 576. That case adopts the restricted meaning referred to and regards it "as settled that in this State an original attachment will not lie to recover unliquidated damages, even though an action of assumpsit is brought and may be maintained therefor."

But the Circuit Court of Appeals does not find it necessary to determine the correctness of the last mentioned result. It takes the view that the words of Section 31 "showing his right to an attachment under the first section," refer only to the grounds of attachment specified in that section and are satisfied when, in a pending cause brought under one of the forms of action enumerated in Section 31, the plaintiff's affidavit shows one of the nine grounds appearing in Section 1. As a consequence, the plaintiff is entitled to an attachment in aid of an action of assumpsit, whether the damages are liquidated or unliquidated. On petition for rehearing, however, when it was urged, for the first time, that the record showed the attachment to be an original one and not one in aid, the court, after holding that, under the circumstances of the case, the plaintiffs in error could not be heard to make this contention, departs from its previous attitude toward Section 1 so far as to say "that the later view of the Supreme Court of Illinois would impel the belief that the attachment in the present case may stand as 'original' rather than as 'in aid.' See Humphreys v. Matthews 11 Ill. 472 and May v. Disconto Gesellschaft 211 Ill. 310, 71 N. E. 1001.”

That the legislature did not intend to confine attachment in aid to cases of liquidated damages is perfectly plain from the considera

tion that of the forms of action mentioned in Section 31, two-trespass and trespass on the case-never sound in aught but unliquidated damages, while a third-covenant-is seldom employed where the damages are liquidated. The only question really present, therefore, is that of choice between two modalities in carrying out this obvious intent. In other words, we reach the same result, so far as the present phase of attachment in aid is concerned, whether we read the word "indebtedness" in Section 1 as including unliquidated demands or limit, as does the court here, the above quoted words of Section 31, in their ambit of reference, to the grounds of attachment specified in Section 1. The holding of the Appellate Court in Steele-Wedeles Co. v. Shoodoc Pond & Packing Co., supra, that original attachment will not lie for unliquidated damages, as we see it, is not at variance with the decision in Humphreys v. Matthews or May v. Disconto Gesellschaft, for in neither of these was an actual case of unliquidated damages presented. And since that holding seems to be justified by the ordinary sense of the term “indebtedness," as well as by the fact that, in the provisions relating to original attachment, there are no indicia of a purpose to include unliquidated demands as there are in the provisions for attachment in aid, the choice of construction adopted by the Circuit Court of Appeals appears to offer the true way out of the difficulty.

Incidentally, it may be observed that the remedy of attachment in aid, as it exists under our statute, is very far from being satisfactorily regulated. It is hard to understand why, in actions of trespass and trespass on the case, an order fixing the amount for which attachment may issue must be indorsed on the writ by a judge or master in chancery, while in assumpsit or covenant for unliquidated damages no such order is required; and this inconsistency, despite what might appear to be an implication to the contrary, in the opinion of the court in the present case, is not explained by its construction of Section 31. Nor is it any easier to account for the failure of the statute to extend the remedy, in terms, to the action of trover; as it stands, we are left to speculate as to the possibility of considering this included as a species of trespass on the case. In all likelihood, the explanation in both cases is the same lack of care in framing the statute and its amendments which is responsible for the loose form of reference to Section 1. The larger question, however, which arises is as to whether there is any occasion at all for drawing a line between original attachment and attachment in aid, in respect of the character of the plaintiff's demand. The theory of attachment in aid, of course, is that an action is already pending. But, as the Supreme Court has held that an attachment in aid may be issued on the very day the action was begun (Schulenberg v. Farwell 84 I11. 400), the question whether a given proceeding is an original attachment or an attachment in aid may very well become in practice a question of whether a præcipe for summons was handed to the clerk an instant before the filing of the attachment affidavit. Indeed, one reason why the question whether an original attachment will lie for an unliquidated demand