United Mine Workers of America v. Coronado Coal Company (Excerpt for Con Law)

268 U.S. 295 (1925)

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE TAFT, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court.There are five principal questions pressed by the plaintiffs in error here, the defendants below. The first is that there was a misjoinder of parties plaintiff. The second is that the United Mine Workers of America, District No. 21, United Mine Workers of America, and the local unions made defendants, are unincorporated associations and not subject to suit and therefore should have been dismissed from the case on motions seasonably made. The third is that there is no evidence to show any agency by the 382*382 United Mine Workers of America, in the conspiracy charged or in the actual destruction of the property, and no liability therefor. The fourth is that there is no evidence to show that the conspiracy alleged against District No. 21 and the other defendants, was a conspiracy to restrain or monopolize interstate commerce. The fifth is that the court erred in a supplemental charge to the jury, which so stated the court's view of the evidence as to amount to a mandatory direction coercing the jury into finding the verdict which was recorded.

[...]

Fourth. The next question is twofold: (a) Whether the District No. 21 and the individual defendants participated in a plot unlawfully to deprive the plaintiffs of their employees by intimidation and violence and in the course of it destroyed their properties, and, (b), whether they did these things in pursuance of a conspiracy to restrain and monopolize interstate commerce.

The case made for the plaintiff was as follows:

(a) In March of 1914, when the Prairie Creek No. 4, Mammoth Vein Coal Mine, and the Coronado mines were operating with union labor and under a District No. 21 contract and scale of wages and terms which did not expire until July 1 following, Bache, the manager of all the properties, determined to run his mines thereafter on a non-union or open basis. He had his superintendent prepare a letter setting forth his reasons for the change and forwarded it to his principals in the East to justify the change of policy which he insisted would result in a substantial reduction in the cost of production. To avoid the charge of a breach of the union scale, he had a contract made between the Mammoth Vein Coal Mining Company, which he controlled, and the Prairie Creek Coal Company and the Mammoth Vein Coal Company, by which the Mammoth Vein Coal Mining Company, a corporation with $100 capital, agreed to run the mines. As it had signed no scale, he considered it free from obligation to the union. He then shut down the mines and prepared to open them on a non-union basis on April 6. He anticipated trouble. He employed three guards from the Burns Detective Agency, and a number of others to aid them. He bought 397*397 a number of Winchester rifles and ammunition. He surrounded his principal mining plant at Prairie Creek No. 4 with a cable strung on posts. He had notices prepared for his former employees, who occupied the Company's houses, to vacate. He had notices warning trespassers from the premises posted at the entrance to the tract that was enclosed within the cable. He sent out for non-union men and had gathered some thirty or more at the mine by the day fixed for the opening.

The mines of the plaintiffs lie in the County of Sebastian on the west border of Arkansas, next to Oklahoma, in a hilly country. The whole country is full of coal mines. The annual coal-producing capacity of Arkansas is about 2,000,000 tons. The product is a smokeless coal like the Pocahontas of West Virginia. All the Arkansas mines but one small one were union. The towns in the neighborhood, Hartford, Huntington, Midland, Frogtown, and others were peopled by union miners and the business done in them was dependent on union miners' patronage. Hartford, a town of twenty-five hundred, was about three miles from Prairie Creek, Midland, less in size, lay about the same distance away in another direction, and Huntington was a mile or two further in still another direction. Frogtown was a small village about a mile and a half from Prairie Creek. Stewart, the president of the District No. 21, and the other officers promptly declared a local strike against the Prairie Creek and Mammoth Vein mine and the union miners who had not been discharged from the Coronado mine of the plaintiffs left. Through the agency of the officers of District No. 21 and the local unions, a public meeting was called at the school house, about a quarter of a mile from the Prairie Creek mine. The influence of the union men was exerted upon the shopkeepers of the towns above named to close their stores and attend the meeting. It was given a picnic character and women and children attended. The meeting, after listening to 398*398 speeches, appointed a committee to visit the superintendent in charge of the mine. On this committee was one Slankard, a constable of the town of Hartford, and a union man, together with two other union miners. They asked the superintendent that the non-union men be sent away and the mine resume operations with union men. The committee was attended by a very large body of union miners. They were met at the entrance to the enclosure by two guards with guns carried behind them. The committee was admitted to see the superintendent and the crowd dealt with the guards. The guards had been directed not to use their guns save to defend their own lives or another's. The union miners assaulted the guards, took the guns away, and so injured a number of the employees, that four or five had to be sent to a hospital. The crowd swarmed over the premises, forced the pulling of the fires and hurled stones at the fleeing guards. The result was that all the employees deserted the mine, and it was completely filled with water which came in when the pumps stopped. One of the crowd went up to the top of the coal tipple and planted a flag on which was the legend, "This is a union man's country."

Mr. Bache, after the riot and lawless violence of April 6, secured from the Federal District Court an injunction against those union miners and others whom his agents could identify as having been present and having taken part. This included the president and secretary-treasurer of the District No. 21 and others. Bache then made preparations to resume mining. The mine was full of water and it required a considerable time to pump it out and get things into proper condition. Because of further threats, the court was applied to to send United States Deputy Marshals to guard the property, and they were sent. Meantime the work of reparation progressed, and Bache's agents were engaged in securing the coming of miners and other employees from in and out of the State 399*399 to enlarge his force. The attitude of the union miners continued hostile, and constant effort was made by them to intercept the groups of men and women who were brought in by Bache from Tennessee and elsewhere, and to turn them away either by peaceable inducement or by threats and physical intimidation. The vicinage was so permeated with union feeling that the public officers did not hesitate to manifest their enmity toward the non-union men, and made arrests of the guards and others who were in Bache's employ upon frivolous charges. Rumors were spread abroad through the county that the guards employed by Bache were insulting and making indecent proposals to very young girls in and about Prairie Creek, and P.R. Stewart, the president of District No. 21, in the presence of some ten persons on the public street of Midland, in the latter part of May, denounced the guards for these insults and proposals, and said that he would furnish the guns if the people would take them. The evidence also disclosed that through the secretary-treasurer of District No. 21, some forty or more rifles were bought from the Remington Arms Company and secretly sent to Hartford for the purpose intended by Stewart. They were paid for by a check signed by Holt, the secretary-treasurer of District No. 21, and counter-signed by Stewart, the president. Conversations with Stewart, which Stewart, did not take the stand to deny, were sworn to, in which he announced that he would not permit the Prairie Creek mine to run "non-union" and intended to stop it. McLachlin, who was a member of the Executive Board of District No. 21, in the first week of July gathered up some of the guns, exactly how many does not appear, and shipped them sixty miles to McAlester, Oklahoma, the headquarters of District No. 21. It appeared that guns of like make and caliber were used by the assailants in the attack on the Prairie Creek mine on July 17. The United States marshals had been withdrawn 400*400 from the premises of Prairie Creek Mine No. 4, before July 1, though the guards were retained.

The evidence leaves no doubt that during the month of June there was a plan and movement among the union miners to make an attack upon Prairie Creek Mine No. 4. By this time the number of men secured by Bache had increased to seventy or eighty, and preparations were rapidly going on for a resumption of mining. The tense feeling in respect to the coming attack increased. On Sunday night, July 12, about midnight, there was a fusillade of shots into the village of Frogtown, a small collection of houses, already mentioned, about a mile and a half from Prairie Creek mine. A number of people in fright at the cry that "the scabs were surrounding the town "left and went to Hartford, about two miles away, and thereafter guards were put out at Hartford to defend that town against attack by the guards at Prairie Creek. The ridiculous improbability that the guards at Prairie Creek who were engaged in protecting themselves and the property and in constant fear of attack should make this unprovoked assault upon the town of Frogtown, is manifest from the slightest reading of the evidence, and there crept in through a statement of one of the defendants, an active union man, to a witness who testified to it, that this shooting had been done by the Hartford constable Slankard, and himself, in order to arouse the hostility of the neighborhood against the men at Prairie Creek. On the night of the 16th, the union miners' families who lived in Prairie Creek were warned by friends to leave that vicinity in order to avoid danger, and at 4 o'clock the next morning the attack was begun by a volley of many shots fired into the premises. A large force with guns attacked the mining premises from all sides later on in the day.

The first movement toward destruction of property was at Mine No. 3, a short distance from No. 4, where the coal washhouse was set on fire. The occupants of the premises 401*401 were driven out except a few who stayed and entrenched themselves behind coal cars or other protection. Most of the employees and their families fled to the ridges behind which they were able to escape danger from the flying bullets. The forces surrounding the mine were so numerous that by one o'clock they had driven out practically all of the defenders and set fire to the coal tipple of Mine No. 4, and destroyed all the plant by the use of dynamite and the match.

The assailants took some of Bache's employees prisoners as they were escaping, and conducted them to a log cabin behind the school house near the mine to which reference has already been made, and where the first riot meeting was held. The four or five prisoners were taken out of the cabin where they had been for a short time confined, and two of them, one a former union man, were deliberately murdered in the presence of their captors, by a man whose identity it was impossible to establish. The evidence in this case clearly shows that Slankard, the constable of Hartford, was present at the killing, and that the men who were killed were in his custody on the way, as he said, to the grand jury. He was subsequently tried before a Sebastian County jury for murder, and was acquitted on an alibi. Slankard, though a defendant and in court, did not take the stand in this case. The overwhelming weight of the evidence establishes that this was purely a union attack, under the guidance of District officers.

The testimony offered by defendants to show that it was only an uprising of the indignant citizens of the countryside really tended to confirm the guilt of the District No. 21. Its palpably artificial character showed that basis for it had been framed in advance for the purpose of relieving the officers of District No. 21 and the union miners of that neighborhood from responsibility for the contemplated execution of their destructive and criminal purpose. It is a doubtful question whether this responsibility 402*402 was not so clearly established that, had that been the only element needed to justify a verdict, the court properly might have directed it. The president of District No. 21 and the union miners, including Slankard, whose agency in and leadership of this attack were fully proven, were present in the courtroom at the trial, but did not take the stand to deny the facts established. Indeed they had been previously brought to trial for conspiracy to defeat the federal administration of justice and for contempt because of these very acts, had pleaded guilty to the charges made, and had been sentenced to imprisonment, and their expenses as defendants in and out of jail had been paid by the District out of the District treasury and the disbursements approved by the District in convention.

It is contended on behalf of District No. 21 and the local unions that only those members of these bodies whom the evidence shows to have participated in the torts can be held civilly liable for the damages. There was evidence to connect all these individual defendants with the acts which were done, and, in view of our finding that District No. 21 and the unions are suable, we can not yield to the argument that it would be necessary to show the guilt of every member of District No. 21 and of each union in order to hold the union and its strike funds to answer. District No. 21 and the local unions were engaged in a work in which the strike was one of the chief instrumentalities for accomplishing the purpose for which their unions were organized. By § 1 of Art. XII of the constitution of District No. 21, it is provided that:

When trouble of a local character arises between the members of local unions and their employer, the mine committee and officers shall endeavor to effect an amicable adjustment, and failing they shall immediately notify the officers of the district and said district officers shall immediately investigate the cause of the complaint, 403*403 and failing to effect a peaceful settlement upon a basis that would be equitable and just to the aggrieved members, finding that a strike would best subserve the interests of the locality affected, they may with the consent and approval of the district officers, order a strike."Thus the authority is put by all the members of the District No. 21 in their officers to order a strike, and if in the conduct of that strike unlawful injuries are inflicted, the District organization is responsible and the fund accumulated for strike purposes may be subjected to the payment of any judgment which is recovered.

(b)It was necessary, however, in order to hold District No. 21 liable in this suit under the Anti-Trust Act, to establish that this conspiracy to attack the Bache-Denman mines and stop the non-union employment there, was with intent to restrain interstate commerce and to monopolize the same, and to subject it to the control of the union. The evidence upon which the plaintiffs relied to establish this and upon which the judgment of the trial court and of the Court of Appeals went, consisted of a history of the relations between the International Union and the union coal operators of certain so-called competitive districts from 1898 until 1914. The miners of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, large bituminous coal producing States, were members of the union and the coal operators of those States, in spite of strikes and lockouts from time to time, were properly classed as union operators. They met yearly in conference with the union's representatives to agree upon terms of employment from April 1st to April 1st. In these conferences the operators frequently complained that the competition of many non-union mines in Western Pennsylvania and the whole of West Virginia was ruinous to their business because of the low cost of production of coal in such mines due to the lower wages and less expensive conditions of working than 404*404 in union mines, and urged that something must be done to stop this, or that the union scale of wages be reduced. By section 8 of the contract between the operators of the Central Competitive Coal Field and the United Mine Workers of America, dated Chicago, January 28, 1898, it was stipulated "That the United Mine Workers' organization, a party to this contract, do hereby further agree to afford all possible protection to the trade and to other parties hereto against any unfair competition resulting from a failure to maintain scale rates."

From this time on in every annual conference until after the controversy in the case before us in 1914, the subject recurred. It does not appear when, if at any time, wages were reduced because of this plea by the operators. Sometimes the contention of the operators as to the effect of non-union competition was conceded and greater activity in unionizing non-union territory was promised. Again pleas were made by the miners' representatives of the great amount of money expended by the union and, in one or two instances, of the sacrifice of human lives to effect this result. Again the union leaders flatly refused to be further affected by the argument and charged that the non-union competition of West Virginia, which was always the principal factor, was only possible because some of the most important union operators in Ohio and the central competitive field really were interested as non-union operators in West Virginia. There was considerable discussion as to the non-union competition of Kentucky fields as a basis for the operators' complaints. At times, there were suggestions from the miners' side that the operators ought to contribute funds to enable the campaign of unionizing to go on, but they never seem to have met with favor.

In general convention of the union of 1904, a local union from the Indian Territory in District No. 21 submitted a resolution which was adopted in respect to the then Colorado strike:

405*405 "Resolved, That in strict compliance with our obligations and teachings, we accord a hearty approval to our National Board on its action in regard to District No. 15 strike, now on, in Colorado, and whatever action taken by the National that in their judgment is necessary to the successful ending in the elevating of the craft in District No. 15, meets our entire approval, for which we pledge our unqualified support, as our knowledge of the field of southern Colorado in the event of an unsuccessful issue of the trouble now pending would work almost unsurmountable and incalculable damage to District No. 21, as it would be an unjust competition in the same commercial field and could with very little effort undersell and supersede us in the Oklahoma and southwestern Kansas markets."

In a joint conference between the union leaders and the coal operators, in 1904, Mr. Mitchell, the president of the union, spoke as follows:

I believe the discussion of this matter should be carried on with perfect frankness and candor on both sides. I don't think we should disguise our position at all; and I want to state for our side of the house just where we are, as I understand it. We don't believe that a reduction in the mining rate will help you. We know that it will do us incalculable injury. We don't believe that a reduction in the mining rate will secure for you a larger amount of trade than you now have. We don't believe that the industry will be benefited by reducing wages. We know that in the past every reduction in wages has been given to the large consumers of coal — not to the domestic trade, not to those who can ill afford to pay high rates for coal, but to the railroad companies and the great manufacturers. We know that when the mining rate is lowest your profits have been least.

"Now, gentlemen, it has required many many years of work and effort and sacrifice to make wages at the 406*406 mines compare favorably with wages in other industries. We are not going back to the old conditions; we are not going to consent to a reduction in wages. We believe the best thing to do is to renew our present wage scale; to make such modifications of internal questions as seem right, and then return and work out the coming scale year as we have the past scale year. I think we may as well understand now as at any other time that we are not going to consent to a reduced mining rate."At the convention in 1906, a resolution that Districts 13, 14, 21, 24 and 25, be admitted to the interstate joint conferences, was adopted. This was urged by President Mitchell of the Union, and the Secretary, W.B. Wilson. The latter said:

If I understand the principle upon which this movement is based, it is to bring into the joint conference those operators and those miners [of the Southwestern District] whose competitive business is closely related to each other; and in asking that the operators and miners of the Southwestern District be admitted to this conference, we are simply carrying out that principle. The coal mined in Western Pennsylvania comes in immediate and direct competition with Ohio; that mined in Ohio, as well as that in Pennsylvania, comes in competition with Indiana and Illinois; that mined in Illinois comes in competition with Iowa; that mined in Iowa comes in competition with Missouri, and coal mined in Missouri comes in competition with Kansas, Arkansas and the Indian Territory. They are all related to one another; they are all competitors with one another, and it is but just and fair that each of these fields should have a representation in the joint conference that sets a base for the prices of the ensuing year. This is the first conference that is held. Whatever wages are agreed upon here, whether it is an increase in wages, a decrease in wages, improved conditions or otherwise, it sets the pace for other districts, and those 407*407 other districts have no voice in saying what that price shall be. In order to avoid that condition of affairs, in order to give justice to the operators and miners in other fields not represented here at the present time, we ask you, as a matter of fairness and justice, to permit those whose operators and miners are represented here, to participate in this joint conference."In 1910, Bache, as a union operator, took part for his mines in fixing the scale of wages in District No. 21. Later on, at the time of a conference, he made a separate scale with the District No. 21 more favorable in some respects than that subsequently agreed on in the conference with the other operators, and he was for that reason expelled from the operators' association. He was permitted at a later time to rejoin it, but he had some litigation with it in respect to their funds, the nature of which is not disclosed by the record.

In 1913 and 1914, and in the years preceding, the International Union had carried on two strikes of great extent covering the Colorado fields, and the Ohio and West Virginia fields, in which very large sums of money had been expended and there was much lawlessness and violence. Its treasury had been drained and it borrowed $75,000 from District No. 21 during this period.

The foregoing will enable one to acquire a fair idea of the national situation, shown by the record, in respect to the mining and sale of coal so far as it bears upon this case and upon this state of fact. The plaintiffs charge that there has been and is a continuously operating conspiracy between union coal operators and the International Union to restrain interstate commerce in coal and to monopolize it, and that the work of District No. 21 at Prairie Creek was a step in that conspiracy for which it can be held liable under the Anti-Trust Act.

Coal mining is not interstate commerce, and the power of Congress does not extend to its regulation as such. In 408*408 Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251, 272, we said: "The making of goods and the mining of coal are not commerce, nor does the fact that these things are to be afterwards shipped or used in interstate commerce, make their production a part thereof. Delaware, Lackawanna & Western R.R. Co. v. Yurkonis, 238 U.S. 439."Obstruction to coal mining is not a direct obstruction to interstate commerce in coal, although it, of course, may affect it by reducing the amount of coal to be carried in that commerce. We have had occasion to consider the principles governing the validity of congressional restraint of such indirect obstructions to interstate commerce in Swift & Co. v. United States, 196 U.S. 375; United States v. Patten, 226 U.S. 525; United States v. Ferger, 250 U.S. 199; Railroad Commission of Wisconsin v. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R.R. Co., 257 U.S. 563; and Stafford v. Wallace, 258 U.S. 495. It is clear from these cases that if Congress deems certain recurring practices, though not really part of interstate commerce, likely to obstruct, restrain or burden it, it has the power to subject them to national supervision and restraint. Again, it has the power to punish conspiracies in which such practices are part of the plan, to hinder, restrain or monopolize interstate commerce. But in the latter case, the intent to injure, obstruct or restrain interstate commerce must appear as an obvious consequence of what is to be done, or be shown by direct evidence or other circumstances.

What really is shown by the evidence in the case at bar, drawn from discussions and resolutions of conventions and conference, is the stimulation of union leaders to press their unionization of non-union mines not only as a direct means of bettering the conditions and wages of their workers, but also as a means of lessening interstate competition for union operators which in turn would lessen the pressure of those operators for reduction of the union scale or their resistance to an increase. The latter is a 409*409 secondary or ancillary motive whose actuating force in a given case necessarily is dependent on the particular circumstances to which it is sought to make it applicable. If unlawful means had here been used by the National body to unionize mines whose product was important, actually or potentially, in affecting prices in interstate commerce, the evidence in question would clearly tend to show that that body was guilty of an actionable conspiracy under the Anti-Trust Act. This principle is involved in the decision of the case of Hitchman Coal & Coke Co. v. Mitchell, 245 U.S. 229, and is restated in American Steel Foundries v. Tri-City Central Trades Council, 257 U.S. 184. But it is not a permissible interpretation of the evidence in question that it tends to show that the motive indicated thereby actuates every lawless strike of a local and sporadic character, not initiated by the National body but by one of its subordinate subdivisions. The very fact that local strikes are provided for in the union's constitution, and so may not engage the energies or funds of the National body, confirms this view. Such a local case of a lawless strike must stand on its own facts and while these conventions and discussions may reveal a general policy, the circumstances or direct evidence should supply the link between them and the local situation to make an unlawful local strike, not initiated or financed by the main organization, a step in an actionable conspiracy to restrain the freedom of interstate commerce which the Anti-Trust Act was intended to protect.

This case is very different from Loewe v. Lawlor, 208 U.S. 274. There the gist of the charge held to be a violation of the Anti-Trust Act was the effort of the defendants, members of a trades union, by a boycott against a manufacturer of hats to destroy his interstate sales in hats. The direct object of attack was interstate commerce.

So, too, it differs from Eastern States Retail Lumber Dealers' Association v. United States, 234 U.S. 600, where 410*410 the interstate retail trade of wholesale lumber men with consumers was restrained by a combination of retail dealers by an agreement among the latter to blacklist or boycott any wholesaler engaged in such retail trade. It was the commerce itself which was the object of the conspiracy. In United States v. Patten, 226 U.S. 525, running a corner in cotton in New York City by which the defendants were conspiring to obtain control of the available supply and to enhance the price to all buyers in every market of the country was held to be a conspiracy to restrain interstate trade because cotton was the subject of interstate trade and such control would directly and materially impede and burden the due course of trade among the States and inflict upon the public the injuries which the Anti-Trust Act was designed to prevent. Although running the corner was not interstate commerce, the necessary effect of the control of the available supply would be to obstruct and restrain interstate commerce and so the conspirators were charged with the intent to restrain. The difference between the Patten Case and that of Ware & Leland v. Mobile County, 209 U.S. 405, illustrates a distinction to be drawn in cases which do not involve interstate commerce intrinsically but which may or may not be regarded as affecting interstate commerce so directly as to be within the federal regulatory power. In the Ware & Leland Case, the question was whether a State could tax the business of a broker dealing in contracts for the future delivery of cotton where there was no obligation to ship from one State to another. The tax was sustained and dealing in cotton futures was held not to be interstate commerce, and yet thereafter such dealings in cotton futures as were alleged in the Patten Case where they were part of a conspiracy to bring the entire cotton trade within its influence, were held to be in restraint of interstate commerce. And so in the case at bar, coal mining is not interstate commerce and obstruction 411*411 of coal mining, though it may prevent coal from going into interstate commerce, is not a restraint of that commerce unless the obstruction to mining is intended to restrain commerce in it or has necessarily such a direct, material and substantial effect to restrain it that the intent reasonably must be inferred.

In the case at bar, there is nothing in the circumstances or the declarations of the parties to indicate that Stewart, the president of District No. 21, or Hull, its secretary-treasurer, or any of their accomplices had in mind interference with interstate commerce or competition when they entered upon their unlawful combination to break up Bache's plan to carry on his mines with non-union men. The circumstances were ample to supply a full local motive for the conspiracy. Stewart said: "We are not going to let them dig coal — the scabs." His attention and that of his men was fastened on the presence of non-union men in the mines in that local community. The circumstance that a car loaded with coal and billed to a town in Louisiana was burned by the conspirators has no significance upon this head. The car had been used in the battle by some of Bache's men for defense. It offered protection and its burning was only a part of the general destruction.

Bache's breach of his contract with the District No. 21 in employing non-union men three months before it expired, his attempt to evade his obligation by a manipulation of his numerous corporations, his advertised anticipation of trespass and violence by warning notices, by enclosing his mining premises with a cable and stationing guards with guns to defend them, all these in the heart of a territory that had been completely unionized for years, were calculated to arouse a bitterness of spirit entirely local among the union miners against a policy that brought in strangers and excluded themselves or their union colleagues from the houses they had occupied and 412*412 the wages they had enjoyed. In the letter which Bache dictated in favor of operating the mines on a non-union basis, he said, "To do this means a bitter fight but in my opinion it can be accomplished by proper organization." Bache also testified that he was entering into a matter he knew was perilous and dangerous to his companies because in that section there was only one other mine running on a non-union basis. Nothing of this is recited to justify in the slightest the lawlessness and outrages committed, but only to point out that as it was a local strike within the meaning of the International and District constitutions, so it was in fact a local strike, local in its origin and motive, local in its waging, and local in its felonious and murderous ending.

But it is said that these District officers and their lieutenants among the miners must be charged with an intention to do what would be the natural result of their own acts, that they must have known that obstruction to mining coal in the Bache-Denman mines would keep 75 per cent. of their output from being shipped out of the State into interstate competition, and to that extent would help union operators in their competition for business. In a national production of from ten to fifteen million tons a week, or in a production in District No. 21 of 150,000 tons a week, 5,000 tons a week which the Bache-Denman mines in most prosperous times could not exceed, would have no appreciable effect upon the price of coal or non-union competition. The saving in the price per ton of coal under non-union conditions was said by plaintiffs' witnesses to be from seventeen to twenty cents, but surely no one would say that such saving on 5,000 tons would have a substantial effect on prices of coal in interstate commerce. Nor could it be inferred that Bache intended to cut the price of coal. His purpose was probably to pocket the profit that such a reduction made possible. If it be said that what District No. 21 feared 413*413 was that, if Bache were successful, the defection among union operators would spread and ultimately the whole District field of District No. 21 in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas would become non-union, and interstate commerce would then be substantially affected, it may be answered that this is remote and no statement or circumstance appears in the record from which it can be inferred that the participants in the local strike had such a possibility in mind or thought they were thus protecting union operators in a control or monopoly of interstate commerce. The result of our consideration of the entire record is that there was no evidence submitted to the jury upon which they properly could find that the outrages, felonies and murders of District No. 21 and its companions in crime were committed by them in a conspiracy to restrain or monopolize interstate commerce. The motion to direct the jury to return a verdict for the defendants should have been granted.

Fifth. These conclusions make it unnecessary to examine the objection which the plaintiffs in error make to the supplemental charge of the court.

The case has been prepared by counsel for the plaintiffs with rare assiduity and ability. The circumstances are such as to awaken regret that, in our view of the federal jurisdiction, we can not affirm the judgment. But it is of far higher importance that we should preserve inviolate the fundamental limitations in respect to the federal jurisdiction.

The judgment is reversed, and the case remanded to the District Court for further proceedings in conformity to this opinion.