CLARK, Circuit Judge.
Defendants, Local Union No. 3 of the International .Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, American Federation of Labor, and certain of its officers, appeal from an order of the district court enjoining various activities of the union and declaring them to be a conspiracy in restraint of trade in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 15 U.S.C.A. § 1 et seq., and laws amendatory thereof. The enjoined activities constitute in sum any and all actions on the part of the union which would tend to boycott from the New York City area market electrical equipment manufactured by the various plaintiffs.
Plaintiffs filed their complaint below in December, 1935. The following year most of the plaintiffs joined in a companion suit against the union, and additional defendants, for treble damages at law under the Sherman Act; and this has remained pending in the district court without trial. The parties agreed to refer the present action [217]*217¡o a special master for determination of “all issues of law and fact,” and it was so ordered. After two and one-half years of hearings, at which, as the master states, more than 400 witnesses were examined, some 1,700 exhibits were presented, and some 25,000 pages of testimony adduced, he filed an opinion, October 2, 1941, in which he discussed the facts and the law, concluding that the plaintiffs should have judgment, and asked the parties to submit proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, D.C., 41 F.Supp. 727. The parties having complied, the master, on November 23, 1942, filed his final report, containing lengthy findings and conclusions, which, upon cross-petitions to confirm and dismiss, the court below confirmed with some limited alterations and additions to the findings, D.C., 51 F.Supp. 36. The final decree, covering 121 printed pages of the record, included these findings, 374 in number, with 26 conclusions of law, as well as the form of injunction to be issued and the declaratory judgment declaring “that the combination and conspiracy and the acts done and being done down to the dale of the conclusion of the taking of testimony herein before the Special Master, in furtherance thereof, all as set forth in the findings of fact as made and adopted by the Court herein, are unlawful and contrary to” the Sherman Act. This appeal is taken upon only the findings and judgment, and hence does not seek any modification of the facts found.1
The eleven plaintiffs in the action are manufacturers of electrical equipment whose factories are located for the most parr without the New York City area. Several operate under collective bargaining agreements with local unions in their localities. Local 3 is the powerful local for the five boroughs of New York City of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, itself one of the most influential members of the American Federation of Labor. Local 3 possesses approximately 15,000 members, divided into numerous separate classifications. Charter A members, numbering around 7,000, consist generally of journeymen electricians engaged in the fabrication and installation of electrical equipment, while Charter B members, numbering around 8,000, are largely employees of local manufacturers producing electrical equipment. Sole voting power rests in Charter A members, and Charter A membership is entailed for sons and brothers of existing members. Prior to 1928, Local 3 was composed only of the present Charter A members; but the membership now covers virtually everyone working on or producing electrical equipment in any way within the area. Although there are other officers and an executive committee, the nerve center of the union rests in the office of the business manager, who, among other things, has the complete power to select which members shall fill existing job vacancies.
The acts constituting the alleged conspiracy in restraint of trade which resulted in the boycott of plaintiffs’ products are all elements of an extensive campaign undertaken by Local 3 to organize the electrical industry in New York City. This occurred with the appointment in 1934 of a new business manager, Plarry Van Arsdale, Jr., after the depression years of 1931 to 1934 had left building at a standstill in New York City and found the union with only a quarter of its members employed. Thereafter year by year, as the master reports, Van Arsdale fought for, and gradually obtained for the union members, a reduction in the number of hours of work per [218]*218week at the basic rate of compensation, as well as an increase in the rate of compensation. Meanwhile the membership of the union greatly increased, so that it was highly successful in unionizing and in obtaining closed-shop agreements in both the local manufacturing and the local contracting branches of the electrical equipment industry. The findings then show that “agreements and understandings” entered into by the three groups — manufacturers, contractors, and union — gave them a complete monopoly which they used to boycott the equipment manufactured by the plaintiffs.
While the boycott as found ran the gamut.of electrical equipment from highly complicated switchboards and control devices down to novelty lamp shades, the case of the modern switchboard is offered as typical. There are in New York City a number of companies manufacturing switchboards who, before these activities of Local 3, shared an open competitive market with many of plaintiffs. In refurn for a closed-shop agreement calling for higher wages and shorter hours for employees, however, Local 3 promised these local companies an exclusive market for switchboards within the city, so that they could name their own prices to offset increased production costs. Local 3 carried out its promise with the help of the electrical contractors. It had already won clos.edshop agreements from a vast majority of the latter through a series of strikes, threatened strikes, and sympathetic strikes by other unions in the building trade, which threatened to tie up all construction work in New York City. It now secured the further terms that union members should work only on switchboards of local manufacture by union shops, and that the contractors should have the sole power to buy materials for any job, with a proviso as additional protection that only products bearing the union label would be utilized. Like the manufacturers, the .contractors were not averse to the extra expense of union material and labor, when all competition was thus removed from the field.
The contractors, however, went so far as to organize a voluntary Code of Fair Competition, which stipulated that every contractor should file with the code committee (upon which two officials of the union sat) every bid made by him on any work authorized in New York City, that he must include in his bid 35% of the labor cost for overhead, 10% of the materials’ cost for commission, and 6% of the total for management, with price cutting penalized by substantial fines. This code was a part of the union contract with several contractor associations in 1935, but it was disapproved by the International President of the I. B. E. W. and the record is not entirely clear whether thereafter it remained a part of the union contract until the contractors themselves gave it up in 1939.2 At any rate, it is found that the union filed no complaints under the code and did not share in the fines or itself take any action against a contractor or cause its members to refuse to stay in the employ of disciplined contractors.
In- other fields, with respect to other items of electrical equipment, a similar situation was found to prevail. Only when no local unionized manufacturer made an article' was its use permitted; and in such cases, if at all feasible, it was required either that the article come from the manufacturer “knocked down,” to be put together by union labor, or that the finished article be unwired and rewired upon receipt. For years it has been more economical for the manufacturer to wire at the factory such articles as lighting fixtures and control equipment; but the union required the wiring to be done by its own members on the job, even though, in the. case of control equipment, the manufacturer had to complete the wiring before shipment for testing purposes. Curiously, a similar requirement was also in force with regard to some equipment manufactured by Local 3 members in closed Local 3 shops. Switchboards, for example, had to be “knocked down” at the factory and reassembled at the job.
All in all, the situation disclosed by the findings is that of an entire industry in a local area, quite dominated and closed to outsiders by a powerful union, whose members receive as a result exceedingly higher wages, shorter working hours, and improved working conditions, and whose copartners — the local manufacturers and contractors — also gain by the greater profits achieved through the stifling of competition. This has been accomplished [219]*219by the traditional labor weapons of refusal to work upon disfavored goods, with peaceful and non-violent3 persuasion, picketing, and blacklisting, and now the active participation of the local employers. The boycott, however, is virtually complete against manufacturers, such as plaintiffs, who have no working agreements with Local 3. It makes no difference that most of plaintiffs are located without the jurisdiction of Local 3 and hence could never bargain collectively with it in any event, or that some of plaintiffs are already working under harmonious agreements with other unions. Moreover, as must be expected in cases where a local area is thus closed to outside products, the persons injured will include not only the excluded manufacturers and rival unions, but also — at least initially and very likely continuously — the consuming public, which must pay higher rates (as, indeed, it must also for raising of wages and lowering of hours of work) and does not receive the benefits of improved machinery or methods of operation. Thus it appears that general electrical work and equipment are costly in New York City, and instances are cited where equipment of plaintiffs was turned down for local equipment with the union label at twice or three times the cost. Since the lowest bidder no longer gets city contracts, if it be not a union bid, the city has lost federal grants, which were premised upon acceptance of the lowest bid. An outstanding example of the consequences from this type of economic warfare to third persons is that of one local manufacturer which has two price lists for its products, one for union use within the city at more than twice the price of the other for use without the jurisdiction.
This is only a brief, but, as we believe, a presently adequate, summary of the many pages of record devoted to a statement of the facts. The industry of counsel and of the special master is to be commended ; but we are constrained to say that the very verbosity and superfluity of the findings have not aided decision as much as doubtless had been expected. We have had occasion to point out recently that findings, prepared after decision by winning counsel, even though accepted by the court, are not as helpful as the trier’s own original views; and this is particularly true when the findings are lengthy and repetitious. Matton Oil Transfer Corp. v. The Dynamic, 2 Cir., 123 F.2d 999, 1001; United States v. Forness, 2 Cir., 125 F.2d 928, 942, certiorari denied City of Salamanca v. United States, 316 U.S. 694, 62 S.Ct. 1293, 86 L.Ed. 1764; Petterson Lighterage & Towing Corp. v. New York Central R. Co., 2 Cir., 126 F.2d 992, 996; cf. Preliminary Draft of Proposed Amendments to Rules of Civil Procedure for the District Courts of the United States, 1944, p. 59. Here there is an added difficulty in the incorporation of all the findings in the judgment and their inclusion by express statement in the declaration of invalidity and by implication in the prohibition of the injunction. Doubtless this was done to satisfy requirements that an injunctive order must set forth the reasons for its issuance and describe in reasonable detail the acts to be restrained, Federal Rule 65(d), 28 U.S.C.A. following section 723c, continuing 28 U.S. C.A. § 383, cf. 29 U.S.C.A. § 109; but a multiplicity of words is as little revealing as a dearth of words. Labor union officers and members are entitled to a more direct and succinct statement of the illegalities of which they are held guilty and which they must cease under penalties of fine and imprisonment. This basic requirement assumes the greater importance here because the course of decision below has left the case not free of ambiguity on a crucial feature. For, as we shall point out, recent decisions have conceded labor unions quite broad powers to refuse to work and to employ peaceful persuasion, but have left open the effect of combinations or conspiracies of unions with nonunion elements, particularly for non-union objectives. Thus the nature and purpose of the conspiracies here may quite possibly be the crux of the case.
This ambiguity as to the importance here of the element of conspiracy with non-labor groups — as against other more traditional labor-union activities' — appar[220]*220ently stems from a real change in emphasis as the case progressed. Indeed, such a change was but natural, if not necessary, because of the complete reversal of the controlling judicial precedents during the long pendency of this litigation. In the original complaint of'1935 the stress is bn union power which has forced the contractors to employ (pnly union labor and “through their [defendants’] said control over said electrical contractors” has coerced the latter not to purchase electrical equipment wired or assembled wholly or partly by non-union men outside the Metropolitan Area. And the prayer for injunction — important because it is, except for limited additions hereinafter noted, the injunction ultimately granted — was against the inducing of persons not to work upon plaintiffs’ products, with no direct prohibition of conspiring with non-union groups and indeed no reference to such groups unless possibly under the vague term “confederates.” Significantly, no non-union co-conspirator was joined as a party defendant and none has since been added. The expanded amended complaint, of 193? does set forth at considerable length allegations of contracts with the electrical contractors who, however, were said “to have been and now are, forced, compelled and coerced by Local 3 to enter into” these contracts for the conduct of their business in the Metropolitan Area and restricting their choice as to the manufacturers from whom they would make their purchases of electrical equipment. ■ And the requested form of injunction remained as in the complaint. The master’s opinion stressed the union’s economic power, which had not merely obtained higher wages and shorter hours of labor, but had brought submission and then complaisant and active participation from the local employers. The voluminous findings filed in 1942 make much more of the conspiracy, or conspiracies; and several conclusory findings allege an intent to give the local manufacturers and contractors power to control the market and the market price. The injunction as granted, however, accepts, with slight and unimportant changes of wording, the original eight subparagraphs as prayed for in the complaint, and merely adds two more: a 9th against making, carrying out, or seeking to secure the observance “of agreements or understandings with contractors, manufacturers, or others, restraining, hindering or preventing” the purchase or use of plaintiffs’ electrical equipment on the ground that it was not made in New York City or worked on by members of Local 3 or was in competition with equipment made by manufacturers employing members of Local 3; and a 10th against “any action whatsoever” hindering the purchase or use of plaintiffs’ equipment on the same grounds as stated in the 9th. The broad scope of the injunction is such as to reach peaceful attempts by the defendants— among whom are included the individual officers of the union — to induce any person (thus even a union member) not to deal' with plaintiffs, while it is most doubtful if the unnamed “confederates” are reached at all. Cf. Federal Rule 65(d), supra.
Nevertheless, on any judicious view of the case, we do not believe the motive or intent of defendants can be at all in doubt; and we are left only to appraise its legal validity and effect. That the union and its officers were acting wantonly, corruptly, or-even benevolently for the mere benefit of their copartners, and were not at all times acting for what they conceived to be the-self-interest of the union and its members, is'nowhere asserted,-but is negatived by the general import of-all the findings and explicitly by several, of which Finding 361 is. typical. That finding, after stating that the defendants and those acting in concert with them were “in no way concerned with the working conditions, rates of wages or-union affiliations of the employees in plaintiffs’ factories outside the Metropolitan-Area,” continues: “The ban on the plaintiffs’ products is and has been imposed and maintained by the aforesaid combination of' the defendants, the local union contractors and the local union manufacturers, solely because the plaintiffs do not, or because of' their geographical location outside the Metropolitan Area cannot, employ members, of Local No. 3 in their factories outside the Metropolitan Area.” In other words it was a make-work campaign for the benefit of union members.
For half a century and against strong popular, political, and legislative pressure, the courts struggled to resolve the anomaly of applying a statute forbidding combinations in restraint of trade to a social organism which must depend, on united effort for its existence and upon at least certain restraints of trade as a reason for its being. Finally, at long length, the Supreme Court boldly announced what must be taken as an abandonment of the-[221]*221attempt. The case which most significantly marks this change is United States v. Hutcheson, 312 U.S. 219, 231, 236, 61 S.Ct. 463, 466, 468, 85 L.Ed. 788, where the majority of the Court through Mr. Justice Frankfurter made clear that the Sherman, Clayton, and Norris-LaGuardia Acts must be read together as “interlacing statutes” presenting “a harmonizing text of outlawry of labor conduct,” and that “the Norris-LaGuardia Act reasserted the original purpose of the Clayton Act by infusing into it the immunized trade union activities as redefined by the later Act.”4 Hence the test of lawful union activities in the famous Section 20 of the Clayton Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 52 — which had been held merely declaratory of existing law in decisions such as Duplex Printing Press Co. v. Deering, 254 U.S. 443, 41 S.Ct. 172, 65 L.Ed. 349, 16 A.L.R. 196 — is now to be given full effect, contrary to the holdings of the earlier cases, as stating permissible union activities in any “labor dispute” within the broad definition of that term of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 113, as applied in cases such as Milk Wagon Drivers’ Union v. Lake Valley Farm Products, Inc., 311 U.S. 91, 61 S.Ct. 122, 85 L.Ed. 63, and New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery Co., 303 U.S. 552, 304 U.S. 542, 58 S.Ct. 703, 82 L.Ed. 1012. Hereafter, following the terms of these Acts, it can no longer be considered illegal for any person or persons, singly or in concert, to cease or refuse to perform any work or labor or peacefully to persuade any person to work or abstain from working, or to cease to patronize any party to such a dispute, or to recommend, advise, or persuade others by peaceful and lawful means so to do. 29 U.S.C.A. §§ 52, 104. And a labor dispute includes, inter alia, “any controversy concerning terms or conditions of employment * * * regardless of whether or not the disputants stand in the proximate relation of employer and employee”; and a case grows out of a labor dispute when it involves persons engaged “in the same industry, trade, craft, or occupation; or have direct or indirect interests therein,” whether it is between employers and employees, or employers and employers, or employees and employees, or associations of each, or when it involves “any conflicting or competing interests” of persons “participating or interested” in the dispute. 29 U.S.C.A. § 113.
That the Court is now settled in its present view of the inapplicability of the Sherman Act even to labor controversies whose most injurious effects may he to others than the immediate parties is made clear by later important and unanimous decisions. The LIutcheson case itself immunized against prosecution under the Act a strike and boycott against a brewery company arising out of a jurisdictional dispute between two unions as to building construction work being done for it and for its adjoining tenant. Shortly thereafter the Court affirmed dismissals of other indictments, in per curiam opinions which merely cited the Hutcheson case. United States v. Building & Construction Trades Council, 313 U.S. 539, 61 S.Ct. 839, 85 L.Ed. 1508; United States v. United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners, 313 U.S. 539, 61 S.Ct. 839, 85 L.Ed. 1508; United States v. International Hod Carriers’, etc., Council, 313 U.S. 539, 61 S.Ct. 839, 85 L.Ed. 1508, affirming United States [222]*222v. Carrozzo, D.C.N.D.Ill., 37 F.Supp. 191. The latter case is particularly instructive because, as the opinion below shows, it involved a charge of conspiracy as against unions and their members to prevent the sale and use in the Chicago area of laborsaving machinery (truck mixers) or in the alternative to force the employment of the same number of workmen as before the use of the machinery. Further, the defendants were charged with having obtained “working agreements” . with the Chicago contractors to this effect. Finally in the controlling case of United States v. American Federation of Musicians, 318 U.S. 741, 63 S.Ct. 668, 87 L.Ed. 1120, the Court affirmed the dismissal in D.C.N.D. Ill., 47 F.Supp. 304, 305, of an action for an injunction brought by the United States against a nation-wide boycott by musicians and their union of recorded music supplanting their services; it did this merely .on citation of the Norris-LaGuardia Act and the New Negro Alliance and Milk Wagon Drivers’ Union cases, supra. In this case the union comprised “virtually all musicians in the nation who make music for hire”; and it was charged not only with conspiring to prevent the use of “canned music” by radio broadcasting stations, in juke boxes in various establishments, and in the home, but also with accomplishing its purposes through coercion exercised on the record-making companies by notifying them that the union members would not make musical records. Of course, the union was not interested in the working conditions of the employees of the record manufacturers or the radio stations, but was interested in providing work for its members; and it enforced its boycott in a national, not in a purely local, market.5
These cases, as well as earlier ones,6 are too closely similar to the case at bar, indeed going beyond it in some aspects, to permit the broad adjudication of illegality here and the injunction based upon it to stand. That this is a labor dispute‘within the statutory definition follows from the precedents. If a dispute as to the conditions of work between a union and employers still remains a labor dispute as to third persons interested therein or injured thereby, its complexion is hardly changed by a settlement — possibly only an armistice, not a treaty — between tbe original parties which hurts the third persons more than did the original controversy. United States v. International Hod Carriers’, etc., Council, supra; Milk Wagon Drivers’ Union v. Lake Valley Farm Products, Inc., supra, 311 U.S. at page 99, 61 S.Ct. at page 126, 85 L.Ed. 63.7 The decision in Columbia River Packers’ Ass’n v. Hinton, 315 U.S. 143, 147, 62 S.Ct. 520, 522, 86 L.Ed. 750, strongly relied on by the plaintiffs and the court below, is not to the contrary; for there the controversy was between a processor of fish on the one hand, and independent fishermen and their association, on the other. The Court emphasized that the defendants’ desire was “to continue to operate as independent [223]*223businessmen”; the dispute related “solely to the sale of fish,” and hence was unlike those- involved in earlier cases, where the employer-employee relationship was “the matrix of the controversy.” The fact that some of the fishermen had a small number of employees who were also members of their association did not alter the essential nature of the controversy. So in American Medical Ass’n v. United States, 317 U.S. 519, 533-536, 63 S.Ct. 326, 87 L.Ed. 434, the professional association was interested solely in preventing the operation of a business conducted in corporate form by Group Health Association, Inc., not in the terms and conditions upon which the latter employed its physicians. Here, however, the defendant union is admittedly a bona fide labor organization; and the “conditions” of the employment of its members by the local manufacturers and contractors are “the matrix of the controversy,” indeed the very thing which causes the plaintiffs their injuries.8
It seems clear, therefore, that the union members may refuse to work upon the plaintiffs’ products; and, in view of the position of economic power which the union has now attained, that privilege is for practical purposes an almost complete shield for the defendants’ acts which are most injurious to the plaintiffs. For all the other acts charged against the defendants may be barred; and yet if the union can hold its ranks together and keep its members from working upon plaintiffs’ products, the Metropolitan Area will still be closed to them. The injunction does not purport to interfere with that privilege directly, though it comes close to doing so in the provisions, clearly too broad, which forbid the union officers from inducing anyone, even members, from thus doing what it and they may legally do. Moreover, peaceful persuasion, even of others, is clearly within the now applicable statutory terms. Indeed, the injunction is so far contrary to the statute that its mandate might well have been stated in the converse of the terms of the Clayton Act, § 20, viz., as restraining Local 3 and its officers “from terminating any relation of employment, or from ceasing to perform any work or labor * * * or from ceasing to patronize * * * any party to such dispute, or from recommending, advising, or persuading others by peaceful and lawful means so to do.” 29 U.S.C.A. § 52, supra. And the vague scope of the declaratory judgment is even more indefinitely inclusive, in terms reaching all the activities of the defendants set forth in the findings.
If the present judgment and injunction must therefore fall, should they be re-framed to reach only the asserted conspiracies with the local manufacturers and contractors? Such a result would obviously call for the most discriminating draftsmanship for the injunction, to make quite clear what was still permissible, to avoid all difficulties as to the extent of its reach in view of the failure to include the co-conspirators, and to define the objectionable union purpose and intent which, rather than the consequences of defendants’ acts, now would become crucial, though proof adequate to justify enforcement by way of contempt proceedings would be hard to secure. But more important is the fact that such an injunction, though on its face so seemingly far-reaching, would after all be of limited effect. For under it, compliance to the extent of public dissolution of all the agreements would satisfy the legal formalities; but still if the union continued its boycott of plaintiffs’ products, conditions would remain substantially as before. Such an inconclusive result can hardly fail to add to the bitterness between the parties; one can easily foresee the almost impossible position of the court in attempting fairly to pass upon the proceedings in contempt which would inevitably follow. We do not think the precedents are correctly interpreted to require an effort so vain and useless.
The doctrine that a union necessarily forfeits the benefits of its statutory exemption from the antitrust laws when it combines with non-labor groups, which has been asserted by some authorities, is rested upon a reading in the most extensive form possible of a limitation noted by Mr. Justice Frankfurter to the doctrine stated [224]*224in the Hutcheson case, as follows: “So long as a union acts in its self-interest and does not combine with non-labor groups, the licit and the illicit under § 20 are not to be distinguished by any judgment regarding the wisdom or unwisdom, the rightness or wrongness, the selfishness or unselfishness of the end of which the particular union activities are the means.” And then to the word “groups” he dropped a footnote, • which reads: “Cf. United States v. Brims, 272 U.S. 549, 47 S.Ct. 169, 71 L.Ed. 403, involving a conspiracy of mill work manufacturers, building contractors and union carpenters.” 312 U.S. at page 232, 61 S.Ct. at page 466, 85 L.Ed. 788. The Brims case affirmed the conviction of union members in the Chicago area who refused to work on non-union out-of-state mill work, with the result that an exclusive market was established for the local manufacturers; and the argument is that by these words of the Court the Brims case is still left in unabated force.9
Now it is doubtful if Justice Frankfurter intended to define precisely just the extent of the limitation the Court had in mind. There was no necessity for him to do so at that time; and the matter had ramifications which the Court would not be likely to dispose of cavalierly. Hence the excepting sentence doubtless should not be read with exacting literalness; but in view of the use which has been made of it, we should note that it is not a positive affirmation, but, a statement of only restricted reach. If its converse is to be accepted as an affirmative, it is not that combinations with non-labor groups are taboo, but only that when a union no longer acts in its self-interest and does so combine, then the licit and the illicit may have to be determined by a judgment as to the rightness or wrongness, etc., of the union end or purpose. Such a truism would seem still of undoubted validity; for the Hutcheson case did not purport to remove all rulings whatsoever upon labor activities. Thus, acts of violence are not protected by the statutes; nor, in any sound view, should labor union activities be usable merely as a blind or cloak for illegality. Thus, in Albrecht v. Kinsella, 7 Cir., 119 F.2d 1003, 1004, 1005, the court said: “Labor unions as such were here involved only in name— and the name of labor was being used as a shield or blind behind which a venal group was hiding and at the same time levying tribute upon industry, business, and home builders. * * * When officials of the labor union step outside their union labor fields and act as highway men, levying tribute on those who wish to build homes or other buildings, acting for their individual gain, the immunity granted to labor unions under the amendment to the Sherman Act does- not extend to them.” 'And the court went on to say; “The test is whether the activity complained of is one promotive of, and within the scope of, the legitimate objects of a labor union or whether the union is being misused by those holding official position or positions of trust therein, who, conspiring for their private and their personal profit, are using the union name to obtain immunity 'from Sherman Act prosecutions and at the same time shield their misconduct behind an organization whose fair name and activities are likely to mislead a court or jury as well as the public.”10
[225]*225It seems to us that this is the distinction the Supreme Court had in mind in its reference to the Brims case, and that the latter cannot now be held as broadly applicable as perhaps it was originally. As one commentator puts it, the Brims case “should be deflated to its position as one of a line of cases uncritically condemning refusal to work on non-union products delivered in interstate commerce” — a position no longer tenable in the form stated — and that “when the union is permitted to act alone, an agreement with employers should not automatically add the condemnable virus.” Tunks, A New Federal Charter for Trade Unionism, 41 Col.L.Rev. 969, 1012.11 This distinction seems to us the logical deduction to he made from the present state of Supreme Court decisions, and to be consistent with the statutes upon which the Court relies, and which do not in terms exclude business-labor combinations, but, as we have seen, do extend the inclusive labor dispute to include employment interests not themselves primarily engaged in a controversy as to terms and conditions of employment. On this basis it would follow that here the activities which cannot be forbidden to Local 3 acting by itself are not to be interdicted because other groups join with them to the same end.
That the present state of the authorities is such as to leave the harshness of the economic struggle to bear with unusual weight upon the consuming public has been the conclusion of commentators who have urged legislative action to check some of the abuses of power which exist.12 But the making of ground rules for business competition is difficult in any case, as shown by current discussions of such matters as patent monopolies and the issue of compulsory licensing to prevent the use of patents to retard new inventions; and the problems are immeasurably increased with the addition of the explosive elements of attempted regulation of organized labor. Indeed, advocates of legislative reform seem not agreed as to whether it should take the course of external controls of conduct towards third persons or internal regulation of union affairs. The determination of such questions of policy is, of course, no proper function of the courts; we mention the matter to indicate that we are not unaware of the disturbing consequences [226]*226to the parties involved of judicial noninterference which, however, in the light of experience seems likely to be less costly to stable social institutions than judicial attempts to resolve these problems without the aid of, if not contrary to, legislative direction.
Judgment reversed and action dismissed.