Commonwealth v. Morrow  Commonwealth v. Morrow (1815) was a Pennsylvania decision by the Adjourned Court of Quarter Sessions for the County of Allegheny on the issue of Labor unionization. The jury in this case agreed that the master shoemakers, the journeymen, and the public, were endangered by the association of journeymen and returned a verdict of guilty on charges of conspiracy. The Pittsburgh Cordwainers and the Court's ruling on "Commonwealth v. Morrow" reaffirmed the Court's views on the earliest forms of American labor unionization —that activities performed by these unions were unlawful. Prosecutors summoned former members of the journeymen cordwainers and master journeymen, most of the owners of the shops. These witnesses provided accounts of collective bargaining, which drove nonmembers out of the work force by refusing to work with them. Defendants argued that every man has a right to determine his own desired wages and doing so as a collective unit was lawful. This court case established the formation of unions and its activities as unlawful, in the form of conspiracy. The legality of unions as a legitimate entity would be established 25 years later in "Commonwealth v. Hunt", a Massachusetts Supreme Court Decision. "Commonwealth v. Morrow", however, serves as an example of early unionization of workers in the United States, and the challenges it faced. In nearly all the major cities, shoemakers (cordwainers) and printers were among the first to form workingmen's societies; carpenters, masons, hatters, riggers, and tailors also found it worthwhile to organize. As the number of workers in manufacturing industries rose, so did their activities to organize for their benefit. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania accused George Morrow, along with 21 other members of the journeymen cordwainers, of "unlawfully, perniciously and deceitfully, designing and intending to form and unite themselves into an unlawful society for the purpose of unjustly raising the price of their wages and the wages of all journeymen cordwainers in Pittsburgh." The trial was held at an Adjourned Court of Quarter Sessions for the County of Allegheny at Pittsburgh on December 10, 1815, The counsel for the prosecution was Attorney General Samuel Douglas, along with Henry Baldwin and William Wilkins. The counsel for the defendants was Walter Forward and Parker Campbell. Before the landmark decision in "Commonwealth v. Hunt", several generations of Americans, including lawyers, judges and legislators, have been convinced by their teachers to believe that the most effective legal weapon against the struggling labor union was the doctrine that concerted activities were conspiracies, and for that reason, illegal.