PROFESSOR MASON'S able monograph on the legal position of trade
unions is designed to show why the Clayton Act Of 1914, which was thought by American trade union leaders to place American unions in the same privileged position as British unions occupy, did not in fact do anything of the kind. to explain the case, he describes very clearly the development of . the common law -doctrine of conspiracy in England and the successive modifications of it by statute up to 1906. The American courts adopted the common law doctrine at an early stage, but Congress has never gone so far in restricting it by statute as our Parliament has done. Of the Clayton Act, the author remarks that "it does not appear so much that Mr. Gompers was presented with a gold brick, as that he gilded the , brick after it had been placed in his hands." He suggests that . American public opinion will not concede to • any class or section the special immunities that trade unions enjoy in . Great Britain.
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