to Smith that the law will take cognizance of it and hold that kind of
a combination to be unlawful.

This definition should be further extended, perhaps, to remind you
that the courts hold that there are certain kinds of combinations,
contemplating ends which will necessarily result in the use of
unlawful means; the most familiar example is picketing. The courts
mostly hold that although in theory a labor union can march up and
down the highway and peacefully advise non-union men or other laborers
not to take their jobs, in practice such action usually, if not
necessarily, goes to the point of intimidation; and intimidation is
nearly always made unlawful by statute. Now I should only add that
it is very important to remember--and even the courts do not always
remember it--that the thing being punished as a conspiracy is not the
end, but the combining; the conspiracy itself is the criminal act.
Suppose in Pennsylvania one thousand men meet and say: "John Smith
has taken a job and is a scab, and we will go around and maul him
to-night," and they do, or they don't; if they are tried, the fact
whether they did maul him or not has nothing to do with the matter
of the conspiracy. They might, of course, be tried for assault and
battery, or for an attempt to commit murder; but if they are being
tried for the _conspiracy_ the criminal act is the combining and
meeting, not what they do afterward. Therefore it is of no importance
whatever what the result of the matter is. The thing that is criminal
is the combining; and this leads to a very curious consequence:
All conspiracies are criminal; but the object aimed at may be very
slightly so. So that it is perfectly possible to have a conspiracy
which shall result to its members in five or ten years in the
state-prison, whereas the object itself, the act aimed at, may have
been comparatively slight, a mere misdemeanor. Take the case of mere