COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 135 



Under English common law it was held that whereas sev- 

 eral men might individually demand higher wages, the 

 moment they agreed among themselves to demand such 

 higher wages or a change in hours, they were conspiring 

 to interfere with the rights of third parties. This is the 

 attitude which courts both in England and in America 

 have taken almost to the present time. In 1824 and 1825 

 English laboring men were given the right to bargain col- 

 lectively provided their agreements applied only to hours 

 and wages of men directly involved. A half century later, 

 in 1 875, English laborers secured a considerable concession 

 in the passage of the Trade Union Act, which provided 

 that no action committed by a group of workmen was 

 punishable unless the same act was criminal if committed 

 by a single individual. In the United States the legal 

 status of labor organizations late in the last century is 

 thus described by the Industrial Commission: "The 

 position of labor organizations under statute law and 

 court decisions is a somewhat uncertain and anomalous 

 one. Their powers and responsibilities are not clearly 

 defined and are probably not very great." 1 It was not 

 until 1914 that labor organizations were clearly given the 

 right of collective bargaining in the passage of the Clayton 

 Amendment to the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. 



Collective bargaining on a large scale in agriculture is 

 of much more recent origin than in industry, and it is now 

 passing through a struggle to acquire a satisfactory legal 

 status very similar to the earlier struggle of the labor 

 unions for recognition. If one scans history, occasional 

 early attempts at collective bargaining in agriculture are 

 doubtless to be found. For example, following the Black 

 Death in southern England, just after the middle of the 



1 Report of Industrial Commission, Vol. XXIII. 



