Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgments
- Prologue: two moments of the republic
- PART 1 LAW AND THE FACTS OF AMERICAN LIFE
- PART 2 LAW, LABOR, AND STATE
- Introduction: dictates of wise policy
- 4 Combination and conspiracy
- 5 The American conspiracy cases
- 6 Commonwealth against Hunt
- PART 3 LAW, AUTHORITY, AND THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP
- An interlude: on law and economy
- PART 4 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL ORDER
- Epilogue: “free Ameriky”
- Index
5 - The American conspiracy cases
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgments
- Prologue: two moments of the republic
- PART 1 LAW AND THE FACTS OF AMERICAN LIFE
- PART 2 LAW, LABOR, AND STATE
- Introduction: dictates of wise policy
- 4 Combination and conspiracy
- 5 The American conspiracy cases
- 6 Commonwealth against Hunt
- PART 3 LAW, AUTHORITY, AND THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP
- An interlude: on law and economy
- PART 4 THE NEW INDUSTRIAL ORDER
- Epilogue: “free Ameriky”
- Index
Summary
In [England], the laws against combinations of journeymen to raise wages, have very lately been repealed. It was assuredly anything but even-handed justice, which made it an offence for journeymen to combine to raise their wages, while masters might combine with impunity for the purpose of lowering wages. Yet, in this country, in Philadelphia, in the Cordwainer's case, tried before Mr. Recorder Levy, and in a late case in New York, the principles of the English acts of Parliament were adopted, and journeymen were found guilty of entering into such a combination. Probably the spirit of those decisions would be construed in this country to extend to combinations for an opposite purpose, among masters. But all these legislations and decisions are needless: let the masters and the journeymen settle their own bargains, and they will settle them much sooner than a court of law; which ought not to be resorted to unless in cases of breach of contract.… If it be worth the while of those who have the labour to supply, or the money to give, to assent to the terms proposed, they will do so. If not, what greater tyranny can there be than to force them?
Thomas Cooper, Lectures on the Elements of Political EconomyDuring the first half of the nineteenth century, labor combinations in at least six American states – Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Virginia – were the subject of indictment and prosecution for criminal conspiracy, comprising twenty-three known cases.
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- Information
- Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic , pp. 128 - 179Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993