hibited class of undue and unreasonable restraints, such as was the particular subject of condemnation in Loewe v. Lawlor, supra.

The argument that the course pursued is necessary to the protection of the retail trade and promotive of the public welfare in providing retail facilities is answered by the fact that Congress, with the right to control the field of interstate commerce, has so legislated as to prevent resort to practices which unduly restrain competition or unduly obstruct the free flow of such commerce, and private choice of means must yield to the national authority thus exerted. Addyston Pipe Co. v. United States, 175 U. S. 211, 241, 242.

Anderson v. United States, 171 U. S. 604, is cited and relied upon by the appellants. In that case this court sustained, as against an attack under the Sherman Law, the legality of an association called the Traders' Live Stock Exchange in Kansas City. An agreement among purchasers of cattle for the purpose of regulating and controlling the local business among themselves had been entered into, and one of the rules provided that the members of the exchange should not deal with any other yard trader unless he was a member of such exchange. It was said (p. 613):

"There is no evidence that these defendants have in any manner other than by the rules above mentioned hindered or impeded others in shipping, trading or selling their stock, or that they have in any way interfered with the freedom of access to the stock yards of any and all other traders and purchasers, or hindered their obtaining the same facilities which were therein afforded by the stock yards company to the defendants as members of the exchange, and we think the evidence does not tend to show that the above results have flowed from the adoption and enforcement of the rules and regulations referred to."

As distinguished from this situation the present case shows that the trade of the listed wholesalers is hindered or impeded; that competition is suppressed and the natural flow of commerce interfered with as the direct result of the circulation of the official reports in the manner stated. The case is quite different from the Anderson Case. And see Montague & Co. v. Lowry, supra, p. 48.

A retail dealer has the unquestioned right to stop dealing with a wholesaler for reasons sufficient to himself, and may do so because he thinks such dealer is acting unfairly in trying to undermine his trade. "But," as was said by Mr. Justice Lurton, speaking for the court in Grenada Lumber Co. v. Mississippi, 217 U. S. 433, 440, "when the plaintiffs in error combine and agree that no one of them will trade with any producer or wholesaler who shall sell to a consumer within the trade range of any of them, quite another case is presented. An act harmless when done by one may become a public wrong when done by many acting in concert, for it then takes on the form of a conspiracy, and may be prohibited or punished, if the result be hurtful to the public or to the individual against whom the concerted action is directed."

When the retailer goes beyond his personal right, and, conspiring and combining with others of like purpose, seeks to obstruct the free course of interstate trade and commerce and to unduly suppress competition by placing obnoxious wholesale dealers under the coercive influence of a condemnatory report circulated among others, actual or possible customers of the offenders, he exceeds his lawful rights, and such action brings him and those acting with him within the condemnation of the act of Congress, and the District Court was right in so holding. It follows that its decree must be

Affirmed.

234 U.S.

Opinion of the Court.

JONES v. JONES.

ERROR TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF

TENNESSEE.

No. 339. Argued April 30, 1914.-Decided June 22, 1914.

The statute of Tennessee of 1865, c. 40, § 8, declaring that children of slave marriages should be legitimately entitled to inherit, as it has been construed by the highest court of that State as not extending the right of inheritance beyond lineal descendants of the parents, is not unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Inheritance is not a natural or absolute right but the creation of statute and is governed by the lex rei sita.

The rights of one claiming real property as heir, through an alien, a bastard or a slave, must be determined by the local law. Blythe v. Hinckley, 180 U. S. 333.

While a colored freedman in Tennessee could dispose of property acquired during freedom by deed or will and it descended to his issue, if any, if he died intestate, if no issue survived, it passed under the terms of the act of 1865 to his widow, if she survived, and not to his collateral relatives.

THE facts, which involve the construction and constitutionality under the Fourteenth Amendment of certain provisions of the laws of Tennessee in regard to the descent of real property, are stated in the opinion.

Mr. W. H. Harrelson, with whom Mr. W. P. Metcalf was on the brief, for plaintiff in error.

Mr. B. F. Booth for defendants in error.

MR. JUSTICE LURTON delivered the opinion of the court.

This is a question of collateral descent arising under the Tennessee statutes.

One John Jones, a colored freedman, died in 1889, the owner of a tract of eighty-seven acres of land lying in Shelby County, Tennessee, upon which he and his wife had lived for many years. He died intestate and without issue. The title to the land was claimed by his widow, the defendant in error, Marguerite Jones, who has since the death of John Jones inter-married with the other defendant in error, Albert Jones. Her claim was rested upon § 4165, Shannon's Compilation of Tennessee laws, which provides that if one die intestate, "leaving no heirs at law capable of inheriting the real estate, it shall be inherited by the husband or wife in fee simple." The plaintiff in error, Will Jones, contested the claim of the widow, contending that the land passed to the surviving brothers and sisters of the intestate, under whom, through quit-claim deeds, he claimed the title. The widow's bill was for the purpose of cancelling these deeds as clouds upon her title. The Tennessee court sustained her bill and adjudged that the intestate having died without issue and without heirs at law capable of inheriting, his real estate passed to his widow under § 4165, supra.

The deeds denounced as clouds upon the widow's title were attacked upon a number of grounds, among them fraud in their procuration. The decree ordering their cancellation was apparently based only upon the ground that their makers, assuming them to be legitimate full brothers and sisters of the intestate John Jones, were sons and daughters of a born slave and themselves born slaves, and as such were not his heirs within the meaning of the Tennessee statutes of descent.

There is a Tennessee statute of descent which provides that the land of an intestate shall pass to his brothers and sisters in case the owner die without issue, and the contention is that if this statute preferring the brothers and sisters of an intestate dying without issue over the husband or widow be construed as applying only to brothers and

sisters born free, it discriminates against those born slaves and thereby violates that equal protection of the law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

This provision of the Tennessee canon of descent by which the brothers and sisters of an intestate dying without issue take his real estate is as old as the State and comes from the common law. It does not distinguish in terms between brothers and sisters born free and those born slaves. Neither does it distinguish between those who are born bastards and those born in wedlock, and those who are aliens and those who are not. Nevertheless, neither a bastard nor an alien has inheritable blood, nor are they capable of inheriting as heirs unless by aid of some statute: 2 Kent's Comm. *p. 211; 2 Blackstone's Commentaries, * p. 249; Levy y. McCartee, 6 Peters, 102. The civil status of slaves in Tennessee, as well as in other States in which slavery existed, was such as to disable them from inheriting or transmitting property by descent. Thus it was said, "They cannot take property by descent or purchase, and all they find and all they hold, belongs to the master. They cannot make lawful contracts, and they are deprived of civil rights. They are assets in the hands of executors, for the payment of debts." 2 Kent's Commentaries, 11th ed., 278, * p. 253; Jackson v. Lervey, 5 Cowen (New York), 397. Slaves, therefore, were not within the meaning and effect of the statutes of descent, and no descent from or through a slave was possible except as provided by some special statute. The rule was the same as to aliens and illegitimates.

After the emancipation of the slaves of the South the statutes of inheritance were extended in many States so as to confer upon the children of parents born in slavery the right to inherit from their parents. But these enlargements of the canon of descent extended only to lineal descendants and did not embrace collaterals. The Ten