The Connecticut labor news., 1922-03-24

protect an employers business by assum- ing or asserting that this Is property.
 Ii 1t IS true that the right to do busi- ness and the conduct of business IS pro- erty, then the right to engage or to con- tinue in business IS property, instead ot a personal right. If courts of equity assumed to regulate personal relations and personal rights they would arrogate to themselves all of the jurisdiction now abolishing trial by jury i'll the great ma jority ot cases now going before the courts.
 The Constitution confers equity power upon the courts by stating that they should have jurisdiction i'll law and i'll equity just as the Constitution makes 1t their duty to issue writs of habeas cor pus and in substantially the same man. ner as it provides for and guarantees trial by jury.
 As has been already indicated, the equity power was originally applied in America as 1t had existed i'll England at the time when our Constitution was adopted and our equity courts were origi- nally limited and defined by English authority. It was by devising and ex- banding the judicial theory that busi- ness is property that American equity courts endeavOred to justify the1r 1n- functions in labor cases.
 If business Is property when a strike or boycott occurs, then 1t necessarily must be property at all other times and entitled to be protected against irrepar- other manufacturers or business men Business and the income derived from business would be established in the same position as land and the income derived from it. One immediate result would be to make all competition 1T trade unlawful because the competition of one manufacturer or merchant would injure destroy the business and the income of another manufacturer or rr1er- chant
 # Equal Rights Clash LoaV Connot
 Interfere
 As was said by Judge Moves of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of the National Fireproofing Company vs. Mason Builders Associa- tion:
 "A laborer, as we'll as builder,
 trader, or manufacturer, has the
 right to conduct his affairs in any
 thereby injure others The result IS not conspiracy, although
 1t may necessarily work injury to
 other persons. The damage to such persons may be serious, it may even extend to their ruir-but if 1t is ir- ficted by combination i'll the legiti- mate pursuit of its own affair, 1t is damnu1n obseque injuria- Nevertheless, 1t cannot be denied that the complainant has grounds for complaining. It desires to en- gage in lawful and legitimate business ill a lawful and legitimate way and is practically prevented
 from doing so by the acts of the de fendants. Its right to do business in the manner 1t desires is inter ferred with and the law affords it no remedy because such interference is only incidental to the exercise by the defendants of their own right to contract for their own benefit. The complainant IS injured, but has no remedy. The law could only
 make it possible for the complainant
 to do business in the way it chooses by compelling the defendants to do choose. But when equal rights clash, the law cannot interfere" In this case, the National Fireproohne | Company had endeavored to secure al injunction against the Mason Builders tween two groups of business men. The | United States Circuit Court of Appeal: | refused to issue an injunction and in do 1 ing so laid down the principles an nounced above, making it evident tha the right to engage in business did no transform business into property.