Black-Listing

See Boycotting. An act of Wisconsin, approved April 8, 1887 (Laws, ch. 349), provides that: Any two or more employees who shall agree, combine, and confederate together for the purpose of interfering with or preventing any person or persons seeking employment from obtaining such employment, either by threats, promises, or bycirculating or causing the circulation of a so-called black-list, or by any means whatsoever, or for the purpose of procuring and causing the discharge of any employee or employees by any means whatsoever. shall be deemed guilty ot a misdemeanor, and upon conviction shall be punished by imprisonment in the county jail for a period of not more than one month or by a fine not less than fifty dollars, or by both. BIiACK-MAIL.i 1. Rent reserved in work, grain, or the baser money. Opposed, white rent: rent paid in silver.^ A rent in grain, cattle, money, or other thing, anciently paid to men of influence, in the north of England, for protection against robbers. 8 By statute 43 Eliz. (1601), o. 13, for preventing rapine on the northern borders, to imprison or carry away any subject in order to ransom him.. or to give or talre any money or contribution, there called blackmail, in order to secure goods from rapine, is felony \rlthout benefit of clergy.* 2. In common parlance, extortion — the exaction of money for the performance of a duty, the prevention of an injury, or the exercise of an influence.5 Imports an unlawful service and an involuntary payment. Not unirequently, the money is extorted by threats, or by operating upon the fears or the credulity, or by promises to conceal or offers to expose the weakness, the folly, or the crime of the victim. There is moral compulsion which neither necessity nor fear nor credulity can resist. The term, as universally regarded, implies an unlawful act; and though, from its indefiniteness and comprehensiveness, the offense is not classified as a distinct crime, it is nevertheless believed to be criminal. Therefore, to charge a man with " black-mailing " is equivalent to charging him with a crime.* Worcester says that " black-mail " originally meant the performance of labor, the payment of copper coin, or the delivery of certain things in kind, as rent; and that the word was contrasted with ' ' white rent," which was paid in silver. Spelman attributes the term "black" to the color of the coin; Jamiesen to its illegality. Dean Swift used the term to signify " hush money," " money extorted under the threat of exposure in print for an alleged offense." Bartlett is the first lexicographer who confines its meaning to that sense, and the use of it to this coimtry... The meaning is not legally confined to extortion by threats or other morally compulsory measure. The sense intended in any given case should be determined by a jury." See Extobtion; Tebeatehings Letter. ' According to most of the authorities, mail is from the French maille, a small coin. It may come from the German mahl, tribute, or from the Gaelic, mal, a rent. ' See 2 Bl. Com. 43-43. s See Termes de la Ley (1731). * i Bl. Com. 244. See AU the Tear, vol. 30, p. 247. « Edsall 0. Brooks, 3 Eobt. 33-34 (N. Y. Super. Ct. <1864), Monell, J. Same case, 17 Abb. Pr., o. s., 236; 28 How. Pr. 431.