esident of the society $150, one journeyman $100,
and the others $50 each. The fines were immediately paid with the aid of
a collection taken up in court.

The decisions produced a violent reaction among the workingmen. They
held a mass-meeting in City Hall Park, with an estimated attendance of
27,000, burned Judge Savage and Judge Edwards in effigy, and resolved to
call a state convention to form a workingmen's party.

So loud, indeed, was the cry that justice had been thwarted that juries
were doubtless influenced by it. Two cases came up soon after the
tailors' case, the Hudson, New York, shoemakers' in June and the
Philadelphia plasterers' in July 1836. In both the juries found a
verdict of not guilty. Of all journeymen indicted during this period the
Hudson shoemakers had been the most audacious ones in enforcing the
closed shop. They not only refused to work for employers who hired
non-society men, but fined them as well; yet they were acquitted.

Finally six years later, in 1842, long after the offending trade
societies had gone out of existence under the stress of unemployment
and depression, came the famous decision in the Massachusetts case of
Commonwealth _v._ Hunt.

This was a shoemakers' case and arose out of a strike. The decision in
the lower court was adverse to the defendants. However, it was reversed
by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. The decision, written by
Chief Justice Shaw, is notable in that it holds trade unions to be legal
organizations. In the earlier cases it was never in so many words held
that trade unions were unlawful, but in all of them there were
suggestions to this effect. Now it was recognized that trade unions are
_per se_ lawful organizations and, though men may band themselves
together to effect a criminal object under the disguise of a trade
union, such a purpose is not to be assumed without positive evidence. On
the contrary, the court said that "when an association is formed for
purposes actually innocent, and afterwards its powers are abused by
those who have the control and management of it to purposes of
oppression and injustice, it will be criminal in those who misuse it, or
give consent thereto, but not in other members of the association." This
doctrine that workingmen may lawfully organize trade unions has since
Commonwealth _v._ Hunt been adopted in nearly every case.

The other doctrine which Justice Shaw advanced in this case has been
less generally a