There was error in quashing tbe bill. It charged a conspiracy at common law, and this offense is not restricted or abridged by tbe statute of'33 Edward I., Gold Brick case, 129 N. C., 584; nor does chapter 41, Laws 1913, generally known as tbe “Antitrust Law,” repeal tbe common law in this respect. A conspiracy is generally defined to be “an agreement between two or more individuals to do an unlawful act or to dp a lawful act in an unlawful way.”
*206Tbe defendants rely upon S. v. Van Pelt, 136 N. C., 633, where this Court held that it was not a conspiracy for laborers to notify an employer that he would not be considered in sympathy with organized labor if he employed others than union men, nor if he retained nonunion men with whom he had already contracted a year in advance; and upon refusal of such employer to discharge nonunion men and refusing to agree to employ only union men, notice had been given that at a meeting of the carpenters and joiners the attitude of the employer was declared unfair towards organized labor, and that no union carpenter would work any material from his shop after a given date.
That case has no bearing upon the present. The opinion in Van Pelfs case is a very full discussion of the rights of laborers by Mr. Justice Goimor, and it was held that the conduct above cited was not unlawful and did not constitute a conspiracy. It was said that “Organized labor or labor organizations are not unlawful. The prosecutor had no legal right to demand that he should be considered in sympathy with organized labor; therefore, he was not to be deprived of any legal right if he preferred to employ nonunion men, and the defendants had a legal right to consider him unsympathetic with organized labor if he exercised such right.” The Court there pointed out that there was no intimidation by numbers or otherwise or any violence or fraud’.
The Court in that case said: “May not men organize to promote their common interests, and, when such interests conflict with other interests, resort to lawful and peaceful means to secure the best results? It is clear that they may. Where, then, is the line which separates conduct which is lawful from that which is unlawful? The answer comes from Chief Justice Bhaw, one of .the wisest and most learned of American jurists: ‘If it is to be carried into effect by fair or honorable or lawful means, it is, to say the least, innocent. If by falsehood or force, it may be stamped with the character of a criminal conspiracy.’ ”
In the present case the charge in the bill is of a conspiracy whose object was to break up a rival company and to- drive it from the business field and leave it clear for the agents and employees of the company for whom the defendants were working, and that this conspiracy was to be carried out by the following means: To break up the sales made by the agents of the rival company; to abuse that company; to vilify it; to follow up its agents from town to town, from road to road, from house to house, and vilify and abuse them; to slander, vilify, and run down that company; to charge falsely that such rival company was composed of a set of thieves and liars; and to say falsely that the agents of that company were a set of thieves and liars who were trying to cheat and defraud the people.
*207A combination to use suck means, reeking with, fraud and falsehood, was a conspiracy at common law,- and indictable as such. There is nothing in the opinion in S. v. Van Pelt which would protect from punishment the conspiracy to use such means for such a purpose. In Van Pelt’s case there was simply a meeting of union laborers who requested an employer to employ only union labor, and, when he refused to do so, gave notice that they considered him not in sympathy with union labor. There was no intimidation, no false representations, no agreement to systematically break up the sales or business of such employer, nor to track down his agents with abuse and vilification, nor to charge him as a thief and liar, nor that his agents were thieves and liars trying to cheat and defraud the people. The charge in the present bill has no analogy to the charge made by the indictment in S. v. Van Pelt.
The acts here charged constituted a conspiracy indictable at common law, and the order quashing the bill was improvidently allowed. .A combination to injure the business of another by a resort to systematic falsehood and misrepresentations, as here charged, has not been made lawful by any statute nor recognized as permissible by the decision of any court. The judgment quashing the bill is
Eeversed.