Note 228 — Chapter XXII · THE ETHICS OF THE ECONOMIC LIFE

Recent Illinois decisions (216 Ill., 358 f., and especially 232 Ill., 431-440) uphold sweeping injunctions against persuasion, no matter how peaceable. "Lawful competition, which may injure the business of a person, even though successfully directed to driving him out of business, is not actionable." But for a union to hire laborers away from an employer by money or transportation is not "lawful competition." The object is assumed by the court to be malicious, i.e., the injury of the employer. The court does not entertain the possibility that to obtain an eight-hour day is as lawful an aim for the labor union as to acquire property is for an employer. The decision shows clearly the difference in legal attitude toward pressure exerted by business corporations for the familiar end of acquisition, and that exerted by the union for the novel end of a standard of living. The court regards the injury to others as incidental in the former, but as primary and therefore as malicious in the latter. It may be that future generations will regard this judicial psychology somewhat as we regard some of the cases cited above, ch. xxi. Other courts have not always taken this view, and have permitted persuasion unless it is employed in such a manner or under such circumstances as to "operate on fears rather than upon their judgments or their sympathies" (17., N. Y. Supp., 264). For other cases, Am. and Eng. Decisions in Equity, 1905, p. 565 f.; also Eddy on Combinations.