[3] The only known case of a criminal prosecution of workers in the colonial era occurred as a result of a carpenters' strike in Savannah, Georgia, in 1746.

[8] Craft workers found that these changes launched them into competition with each other to a degree that they had not experienced previously, which limited their opportunities and created substantial risks of downward mobility that had not existed prior to that time.

Over the first half of the 19th century, there were twenty-three known cases of indictment and prosecution for criminal conspiracy, taking place in six states: Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Louisiana, Massachusetts and Virginia.

However, in most instances the plaintiffs' desire was to establish favorable precedent, not to impose harsh penalties, and the fines were typically modest.

[11] One of the central themes of the cases prior to the landmark decision in Commonwealth vs. Hunt was the applicability of the English common law in post-revolutionary America.

[12] For instance, in Commonwealth v. Pullis, a case in 1806 against a combination of journeymen cordwainers in Philadelphia for conspiring to raise their wages, the defense attorneys referred to the common law as arbitrary and unknowable and instead praised the legislature as the embodiment of the democratic promise of the revolution.

[13] In ruling that a combination to raise wages was per se illegal, Recorder Moses Levy strongly disagreed, writing that "[t]he acts of the legislature form but a small part of that code from which the citizen is to learn his duties... [i]t is in the volumes of the common law we are to seek for information in the far greater number, as well as the most important causes that come before our tribunals.

"[14] As a result of the spate of convictions against combinations of laborers, the typical narrative of early American labor law states that, prior to Hunt in Massachusetts in 1842, peaceable combinations of workingmen to raise wages, shorten hours or ensure employment were illegal in the United States, as they had been under English common law.

[15] In England, criminal conspiracy laws were first held to include combinations in restraint of trade in the Court of the Star Chamber early in the 17th century.

Pullis was actually unusual in strictly following the English common law and holding that a combination to raise wages was by itself illegal.

[26] Another line of cases, led by Justice John Gibson of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania's decision in Commonwealth v. Carlisle, held that the motive of the combination, rather than simply its existence, was the key to illegality.

[27] Gibson wrote, "Where the act is lawful for an individual, it can be the subject of a conspiracy, when done in concert, only where there is a direct intention that injury shall result from it.

[29] Thus, as economist Edwin Witte stated, "[T]he doctrine that a combination to raise wages is illegal was allowed to die by common consent.

[31] In 1835, in response to rampant inflation caused by Andrew Jackson's destruction of the Bank of the United States,[citation needed] the society raised their pay, by means of striking, to $1.75 per pair of boots produced.

[37] Horne responded by entering a complaint with the Suffolk County Attorney, Samuel D. Parker, and by sending his cousin, Dennis, who was also a member of the Society, to try to reach a settlement with them.

[38] A few days later, on October 8, an indictment was entered charging that the Society was a criminal conspiracy to impoverish employers and non-union laborers.

Wait, Horne's master, testified, "He did not feel at liberty to employ any but society men", because he, "would not wish to lose five or six good workmen for the sake of one.

"[51] Rantoul's emphasis on the requirement of injury recalled Gibson's opinion in Carlisle twenty years earlier, and drew from the entire line of cases opposing Pullis and Fisher.

Such an association might be used to afford each other assistance in times of poverty, sickness and distress; or to raise their intellectual, moral and social condition; or to make improvement in their art; or for other proper purposes.

If a large number of men, engaged for a certain time, should combine together to violate their contract, and quit their employment together, it would present a very different question.

The second count, omitting the recital of unlawful intent and evil disposition, and omitting the direct averment of an unlawful club or society, alleges that the defendants, with others unknown, did assemble, conspire, confederate and agree together, not to work for any master or person who should employ any workman not being a member of a certain club, society or combination, called the Boston Journeymen Bootmaker's Society, or who should break any of their by-laws, unless such workmen should pay to said club, such sum as should be agreed upon as a penalty for the breach of such unlawful rules, &c; and that by means of said conspiracy they did compel one Isaac B.

Wait, a master cordwainer, to turn out of his employ one Jeremiah Horne, a journeyman boot-maker, &c. in evil example, &c. So far as the averment of a conspiracy is concerned, all the remarks made in reference to the first count are equally applicable to this.

But whatever might be the force of the word "compel," unexplained by its connexion, it is disarmed and rendered harmless by the precise statement of the means, by which such compulsion was to be effected.

Suppose a baker in a small village had the exclusive custom of his neighborhood, and was making large profits by the sale of his bread.

And it might be said and proved, that the purpose of the associates was to diminish his profits, and thus impoverish him, though the ultimate and laudable object of the combination was to reduce the cost of bread to themselves and their neighbors.

Shaw wrote his opinion in Hunt just one week after he decided another landmark labor case, Farwell v. Boston & Worcester R.R.

[59] Walter Nelles wrote that, "The constituency to which [Shaw] was keenest comprised State Street and Beacon Hill, the bankers, the textile manufacturers, the railway builders.

Nelles notes that in 1842, in the middle of a depression, labor unrest in the textile mills that drove much of Boston's economy was very unlikely.

Levy notes that in the forty years after Hunt was decided, the case served as the authoritative statement of the law on labor combinations.

For instance, in 1869, members of a mine committee in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, were found guilty of conspiracy, sentenced to jail for thirty days and heavily fined.