Courts Prosecute Labor Unions as Criminal Conspiracies in 17 Cases Since 1806, Criminalizing Worker Organization

American courts systematically suppress labor organizing throughout the early 19th century by prosecuting unions and strikes as criminal conspiracies under common law doctrine inherited from England. From the 1806 Philadelphia Shoemakers’ case through 1836, labor unions face conspiracy charges in at least 17 cases for the “crime” of combining to raise wages, shorten hours, or ensure employment for their members. Courts follow the precedent of the 1721 English case Rex v. Journeymen Tailors of Cambridge, which treated a labor union seeking higher wages as criminal conspiracy in restraint of trade. This judicial hostility makes union formation and strike activity legally perilous, with workers risking criminal conviction for collective bargaining activities that later generations recognize as fundamental rights. The systematic criminalization of labor organizing demonstrates how legal institutions serve employer interests by treating workers’ attempts to collectively negotiate as illegal combinations while corporate combinations face no similar prosecution.

The conspiracy doctrine’s application to labor creates asymmetric legal treatment favoring capital over labor. English common law treats any combination to raise prices or wages as conspiracy against the public interest, but American courts apply this doctrine almost exclusively against workers while ignoring or blessing corporate combinations and employer associations. The 1806 Philadelphia cordwainers (shoemakers) case establishes the American precedent that workers who organize to demand higher wages or closed shops—workplaces hiring only union members—commit criminal conspiracy. Subsequent prosecutions target various trades across different cities, creating a nationwide pattern of judicial suppression that makes labor organizing dangerous regardless of location or industry. Workers face prosecution not for violence, property destruction, or other traditional crimes, but simply for organizing unions and collectively withdrawing their labor.

The criminal conspiracy cases impose severe constraints on early labor organizing despite workers’ episodic successes in winning concessions through strikes. The legal threat means that union victories like the 1835 Philadelphia general strike’s achievement of the ten-hour day occur despite rather than because of the legal framework, which treats the organizing and coordination making such victories possible as criminal activity. Workers must balance the potential gains from collective action against the risk of criminal prosecution, fines, and imprisonment. The conspiracy doctrine’s vagueness—prosecuting the mere formation and operation of labor organizations without requiring proof of specific wrongdoing or illegal means—gives prosecutors and courts broad discretion to criminalize virtually any labor organizing activity they choose to target. This legal uncertainty chills organizing by making it unclear what activities might trigger prosecution.

The conspiracy prosecutions reveal judicial bias in favor of employers’ property rights over workers’ rights to organize. Courts treat employers’ interests in controlling wages and working conditions as legally protected property rights, while workers’ collective bargaining efforts constitute illegal interference with those rights. Indictments often charge unions with forming “unlawful clubs” with “unlawful rules” without specifying what makes the organization or rules unlawful beyond the fact of collective action itself. The common-law conspiracy doctrine becomes a tool for employers to use state power to suppress labor organizing, with prosecutors and judges acting as enforcers of employer prerogatives rather than neutral arbiters. This pattern demonstrates how legal institutions can be captured to serve elite economic interests through selective application of purportedly neutral common-law principles.

The criminalization of labor organizing through conspiracy prosecution exemplifies kakistocracy through the legal system’s systematic bias against workers’ collective action. Courts inherit and apply English common law designed to protect aristocratic and merchant interests against worker combinations, using criminal law to suppress peaceful organizing that threatens employer control over wages and working conditions. The doctrine criminalizes the formation and operation of labor organizations themselves rather than requiring proof of violent or destructive means, treating workers’ solidarity as inherently criminal while ignoring employer combinations. This judicial hostility persists until Massachusetts Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw’s 1842 ruling in Commonwealth v. Hunt finally establishes that labor combinations organized for legal purposes using legal means do not constitute criminal conspiracy—a decision that Leonard Levy calls the “Magna Carta of American trade-unionism.” However, even after Hunt, courts continue finding ways to declare labor activities criminal or purposes unlawful, demonstrating the persistent institutional resistance to recognizing workers’ organizing rights.