change of government merely without a difference. The railway trainmen's officers lose their power, and this is usurped by the railroad president. He immediately becomes the head of a band of men who are submissively satisfied. The courts are asked to interfere in the relations between the officers and their employes. But the broad question is not which of these controlling forces shall have the command of the whip hand for the time being. That measure being successful, a good many of the strikes of the United States would immediately become impossible. Crary (N. D.) Courier. are The most outrageous decision of a court of justice in this country for a long time is the injunction order of Judge Adams of the United States District Court in the Wabash strike case. In substance it enjoins the employes of the corporation for quitting the employment of the company, or persuading others not to work except at a fixed price. This is furtheir than courts have heretofore gone. Let us analyze the decision. The employes are simply selling their labor as a commodity to the company at a fixed price. Assume for a moment that there is no mutual contract. Then the employes have the right to decline to deliver any more of the commodity unless the price be satisfactory-to quit work. A farmer is selling his wheat to a grain firm. He wants a better price. The firm refuses to give it. They secure an injunction compelling the farmer to deliver the commodity. The cases parellel. If the laborer can be compelled to deliver the commodity so farmer, under the ruling of Judge Adams. And neither is permitted to suggest to his neighbor to sell no more of the commodity, whether it be labor or wheat. A federal court, however, will grant an injunction authorizing the buyer to take either. It is urged that there was a mutual contract between the Wabash and its employes, under which they were to furnish a certain amount of labor. If this be true, the Wabash was not entitled to the writ of injunction. Every lawyer, and even West Virginia justices, who are supposed to know less than any other known specimen of the genus homo, knows that it is a fundamental principle of law that the remedy for breach of contract is an action in tort-to recover damages for the injury done--not to stop the doing. The Wabash had an adequate remedy at law, and if it had, was not entitled to the writ of injunction. can the Chas. H. Kerr, in American Labor Union Journal (Butte, Mont.). The capitalists who rule the United States have lately made a gigantic blunder. The Wabash Railroad has asked for an injunction to prevent its employes from striking in what has always been regarded as a perfectly lawful manner and a United States judge has granted the injunction. Socialists have been arguing for many years that the government of the United States, like the government of any other "civilized country," is under the control of the capitalist class and is run for the benefit of that class. But the schools, the churches and the newspapers have taught that America was the land of the free, also the home of the brave; that Europe might have its social classes, but that in America the laws are enacted and administered by the people and for the people. Here and there a workingman of intelligence enough to think for himself has accepted the Socialist position, but the vast majority thus far have believed what the hired men of capitalism have taught them. has been the strongest of all forces for This belief on the part of the workers keeping them in subjection to the capitalists, the common prudence on the part do all in their power to keep this belief of the latter should have induced them to unshaken. Indeed, the far-sighted capitalists controlling many of the most important railways had already foreseen the possibility of a conflict with organized labor, and forestalled it by a small concession in the way of advanced wages. But the managers of the Wabash could see only that an advance in wages meant judge could see only that an injunction a diminished dividend; a United States was desired by some of the men to whom he owed his position, and the result is a tyrannical injunction which strikes at almost all the rights which the laborers thought belonged to them, and will con vince hundreds of thousands of hitherto unthinking workers that the time has come for serious thinking. Here is the opportunity for Socialistsan opportunity such as we might have We no longer need waited a decade for. to prove slowly and painfully that there is a ruling class and a subject class, that the laborer's interests are with the latter and that he must act with his fellow laborers to get relief. All this has been proved for us. We no longer need to argue that the conflict is a hopeless one if waged by but not always easy to demonstrate. The means of strikes; this has long been true junction has made the whole situation frank brutality of this recent federal inplain to the dullest observer. Hereafter in a strike the capitalist not only controls the food, clothing and shellong survive; he also controls the courts, ter without which the laborer can not backed by bayonets, rifles and Gatling guns, and can crush this ineffective revolt of unthinking laborers as quickly and as relentlessly as may seem good to him. And the Socialist smiles, not in derision, but in sympathy and joy. For he knows that the laborer, cut off by forces beyond his control from his outworn and helpless fashion of struggling will fight in the only way left open to him, will assert his manhood at the ballot box, will vote once and for all to abolish the last and perhaps worst form of slavery, and will lay broad and deep foundations for a happier life for all. Crookston (Minn.) Journal. of Labor in 1893; it was killed by the failure of the A. R. U. strike in 1894; and now the poor thing is dead again, because of a scrap of paper signed by a judge who is the hired servant of the St. Louis Transit Company. These perpetual "death-knells" remind one of the little verse written by Oliver Goldsmith, which ran as follows: A dog went mad and bit a man, The history of the last century shows The labor unions feel that the very life that organized labor is as persistent as of their organizations are at stake and Sir Thomas Lipton, and well, it is a great that if the courts retain the right to deal more successful. It can receive no prevent strikes in this way a death blow heavier blow than it has already withhas been struck at the unions. Here is stood again and again, and it will survive, opened up again the old contention in no doubt, as long as the United States regard to government by injunction. It endures. is certainly a fact that there has been a tendency with many judges toward the assumption of an unprecedented amount of power, and this St. Louis court has gone to the extreme. The American workman, through organization, has been enabled to improve his lot and frequently it has been necessary for the men to strike to gain fair play. If this right is taken away it means great loss to the employe and a corresponding gain to the employer. Many corporations are fighting the unions, and many are the charges that the court usually favors the corporations. In the present case the court comes near to taking away individual rights, and if the temporary decision stand, no one could with any certainty predict just who or what might next be enjoined. We have three departments of government, and each should at all times keep safely within its own jurisdiction. Duluth (Minn.) Labor World. "The death-knell of organized labor in the United States has been sounded by the injunction recently issued by Judge Elmer E. Adams, of St. Louis," says the New York Sun. "The death-knell of organized labor has become somewhat of a joke among people who have good memories," retorts Herbert N. Cassen, the preacher-labor advocate. "Again and again it has been sounded during the last fifty years; obituaries have been written; funerals have been arranged and graves prepared; yet the rude and unobliging labor movement lives on, healthier and heartier than ever." The fact is that the labor movement is one of those extraordinary things that thrive on ill-treatment. You may weaken it, perhaps, with kindness or prosperity, but you can not kill it with injustice. Detroit (Mich.) Free Press. There is a charge that courts of equity are usurping the functions of the regular administrators of the criminal law; that the injunction judges are making conspiracies out of open conference and free speech; that totally unwarranted inferences are drawn, as that a strike on the Wabash would mean a strike throughout the Brotherhood; and that there is a manifest attempt on the part of courts assuming questionable jurisdiction to destroy labor combinations by forbidding the direction of their policy by representative officers chosen for that purpose. Even if it be true that the men are under contract that is not yet terminated, it is regarded by many authorities as beyond the powers of a court to attempt the enforcement of specific performance by injunction, the accepted remedy being in an action for damages by the company, as in the Waterbury case, modeled after the Taff Vale case in England. Then there is this other question to which attention was given when the injunction first issued. If it be conspiracy for the officers of a union, chosen and invested with authority by its membership, to tell its men to stop work if they are not paid more, why is it not a conspiracy for the officials of a railway system, invested with authority by its stockholders, to say that the men must quit work if they do not accept lower wages? What is the legal authority for discriminating between combines or organizations, particularly where there is a degree of interde for the layman to pass upon the questions raised, but they must in the end be resolved by the courts. Mitchell (S. D.) Capital. It is the child of conflict. It is no hot-house weakling. Like iron, not crock-pendence in their relationship? It is not ery, the more it is hammered the stronger it grows. The reason why is very plainthe greater the opposition the greater is seen to be the need of organization. Trade-unionism has been killed as often as Finnigan's cat. To mention a few instances, it was killed by the conspiracy laws adopted from the English code when the Republic first began; it was killed by the verdict of a Philadelphia judge in 1806; it was killed by the verdict of Judge Edwards of New York, in 1836; it was killed by the disruption of the National Labor Union in 1868; it was killed by the disintegration of the Knights Here is a new phase in the matter of strikes. The employes of the Wabash Railroad were about to enter upon a strike over the matter of wages and it threatened to spread to other lines which would affect the business of the country to a considerable extent. The president of the railroad appealed to a St. Louis judge to issue an injunction preventing the officers of the Brotherhood of Firemen from issuing the order which would put the firemen on a strike. No sooner was the injunction issued than did the firemen proceed to secure the dissolution of the order issued by the court. In this, no doubt, the firemen will win, as of right they should, for it is putting too much of a restraint on the right of an individual. There is no law in the land which can compel a laborer to work if he does not want to, and it should be so in the case of a collection of individuals. If the firemen have grievances of which they can not secure an adjustment except by quitting work they should not be denied it. At the same time the firemen should in no way prevent the railroads from operating their lines with whatever assistance they can secure. It is too often the case that strikers wilfully prevent public business being carried on in order to gain their point. This is where they exceed their rights as individuals or an organized body of labor. Lincoln (Neb.) Commoner. The Democratic platform of 1896 declared: "We specially object to government by injunction as a new and highly dangerous form of oppression by which federal judges in contempt of the laws of States and the rights of citizens become at once legislators, judges and execution ers. 99 This plank was bitterly denounced by Republican newspapers and was frequently referred to as an assault upon the courts. Interest in this protest against government by injunction has recently been awakened because of the writ issued by Judge Adams in the United States Circuit Court at St. Louis. Upon application by the officers of the Wabash Railroad Company, Judge Adams granted an injunction restraining representatives of the labor unions from "ordering, coercing. persuading, inducing or otherwise causing" the employes of the railroad to strike or quit the service of the company. Representatives of the labor union were also enjoined from "ordering, advising or influencing employes on connecting lines to refuse to interchange traffic." It is somewhat interesting to observe that even Republican newspapers are finding it necessary to protest against this "highly dangerous form of oppression by which federal judges in contempt of the laws of States and the rights of citizens become at once legislators, judges and executioners." The Chicago Record-Herald, a Republican paper, referring to Judge Adams' injunction, says that it "is such an extraordinary exercise of the power of injunction that it may well invite public apprehension regarding the extent which this arbitrary instrument of the court may be used in the future." to The Record-Herald further says that "if this injunction stands and is finally written into the laws of our country, it is difficult to conceive of the possibility of fixing any limit to government by injunction." The Des Moines Register and Leader, also a Republican paper, says that heretofore it has been assumed that the right of labor involved the corresponding right to refuse to labor and that the exercise of this latter right means men acting as individuals or collectively. The Register and Leader points out that if Judge Adams' injunction is sustained, "it will revolutionize the relations of organized labor to its employers and will practically eliminate the strike as a weapon of defense." Judge Tuley, an Illinois State judge at Chicago, makes interesting comment upon the Adams injunction. Judge Tuley says that he is not surprised at any injunction of any kind being issued, and he adds: "I regret it very much because I believe that the issuing of such writs of injunction brings the administration of justice into contempt. It breeds discontent and will reap the whirlwind some day from the seeds so sown. "The day may come in the not distant future when the working classes will have political control and will appoint judges who will also issue writs of injunctionin their favor. I see no reason why a writ of injunction should not as well issue against a railroad enjoining it from discharging any employes or from failing to pay such employes a certain fixed rate of wages. It would be no greater departure from the true principles that ought to govern when issuing such writs. "We judges are getting to be the whole thing in government. We are approaching a condition that will be without precedent in the history of the world, in which the governing power will be exercised by the judges, with the executives and legislators as mere figureheads in carrying on the government. It is time to call a halt." Will any intelligent man undertake to say that Judge Tuley is desirous of bringing the courts into disrepute? Is it not true, on the contrary, that men who protest against this "highly dangerous form of oppression" as Judge Tuley does show a much deeper anxiety for the maintenance of the dignity of the courts than do those who, either directly or indirectly, are responsible for the effort to establish government by injunction? Judge Tuley well says, "It is time to call a halt." That is what the Democrats said in 1896; and it is significant that while the government by injunction plank of the Chicago platform was bitterly denounced and many claimed that that plank had considerable to do with the defeat of the Democratic ticket, since then injunction writs issued by federal judges have become, by reason of their radical terms, more and more oppressive, and this form of oppression has come to be so "highly dangerous" that even Republican newspapers are moved to enter vigorous protest. D. F. Bradley, president of the Iowa College, submits to an Iowa paper two questions, as follows: 1. If a judge may enjoin union labor from ordering a strike, why may he not upon application enjoin capitalists against reduction of wages, or other acts alleged to be oppressive to labor? 2. If it is good law for United States courts to intervene in behalf of interstate railroads, why is it not good law for the same courts to redress grievances of employes engaged in interstate commerce? The Sioux City Journal, in reply to these questions, says that "the obvious answer in both queries is that an injunction in one case would be just as logical as in the other." And yet we do not recall an instance where a federal judge has applied the writ of injunction in this way to corporations. Boyce's Weekly (Chicago, Ill.). No such sweeping injunction as was issued by Judge Adams of the federal court at St. Louis against the officers of the various unions of trainmen employed on the Wabash System, has ever before come from a court in the United States. The order absolutely forbids the men from going on strike. While it does not say that no individual must leave his employment, it has precisely the same effect in so far as leaving employment would be an effective weapon in making the railroad officials listen to a request for more pay. Officials of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen declare that President Ramsey acted in bad faith, as he took advantage of an extension of time from noon to 5 p. m., asked for by and given him to come to a decision, to go into court and obtain the injunction. The men will obey the order, but will also make a legal fight to have it dissolved. If this injunction holds, enjoining men from quitting work when a demand for more pay is not granted, would an injunction hold denying a railroad corporation the right to reduce wages? If one, why not the other? Employes make contracts as well as corporations, and a reduction of wages would cause loss to these contractors as well as a raise in wages causes loss to the railroad. Let the higher courts uphold this new judge-made law, and open union will disappear, to be replaced by secret societies and anonymous demands. The power to arbitrate will no longer exist, for arbitration implies organization and leaders. But to be a leader, under this new ruling, means to be enjoined from doing the will of those represented. Thus public opinion will not be able to reach and modify demands, and anarchy, in the sense of disorganization, will ensue. "Every person ought to find a certain remedy in the law for all injuries and wrongs which he may receive," is the language of the Constitution of the State of Illinois. The Constitution of the United States gives every one the right to speak or write opinions on any subject. This injunction contravenes not only the spirit of the supreme law, but of every man's right to do in an orderly manner those things that will best serve his material interests. In no age of the world, and in no civilized country has the usurpation of power been more complete than at the present time, in free America-"The land of the free and home of the brave," the land over which the Stars and Stripes have been planted at the sacrifice of countless numbers of human lives, whose every thread is dyed in the crimson blood of the flower of American manhood, and steeped in the tears of anguish of American womanhood, but which, alas, now waves over our land in silent mockery of the noble sentiment which placed it there. "Is individual liberty dead?" No, 'tis only sleeping. Will the usurpation of powers not delegated by the people endure? No. Government by injunction must go. Go down before the storm of popular indignation which it has aroused, but when it breaks forth will twentieth century civilization be satisfied with reclaiming the powers which have been usurped, by the peaceful solution of the ballot, or will a natural born leader of men, a genius of administration of Napoleonic ability arise from the great middle class, will the common people then have found a leader through whose inspiration they will also reclaim that which has been exploited from them by centuries of oppression-the unconsumed product of labor, which labor alone produced? Time alone can tell, for Nature hath her subtle ways. Anaconda (Mont.) Labor-Socialist. Without discussing the merits of the proposed strike or the merits of strikes themselves, the question of whether or not a body of workingmen may not vote to strike "or quit work" has never before in the history of our country, perhaps, been met with so arbitrary an answer as it has in the injunction of Judge Adams. * * * Injunctions of a number almost beyond the power of man to compute have in time past been issued by courts throughout the country, restraining strikers from performing certain acts of violence. Not always were the things enjoined of a violent character, but merely, by being enjoined, assisted in strengthening the hands of the capitalist. Hardly without exception the judges of the bench of the country have conceded to every application for an injunction directed against the laboring men without any apparent hesitation and with no regard as to whether or not an injunction could lie in the premises. In a vast majority of cases it is safe to say that no injunction could lie in good law, but the ever-ready subserviency of the judiciary to comply with the demands of the capitalistic classes has easily swept away this consideration and the injunction has issued notwithstanding. In the injunction proceedings brought before Judge Adams, however, an almost wholly new reason is brought forward as to why an injunction should issue. "The men are going to quit work in a body; your 'honorable' court is asked to say to the workingmen that they can not quit and if they do quit they are in contempt of this court and subject to punishment." And the "honorable" court granted it. Though flagrantly in violation of all law, of all ethics, of all sense of fair play, the "laboring man bowed in submission to the law." Let all men who have found pleasure in saying that when a man wants to quit work let him quit, let all men who have found pleasure in saying that the ways of laboring men is by force and "a la lantern;" the way of the furious mob; let all men observe that the laboring men bowed their heads in submission to the law. Let them further take notice that it was the capitalist that appealed to the sacred institution which is popularly supposed to sit in blind justice in deciding the rights of all men and asked the court for something that the statute books never have said could be done; and let them notice that the judge, unquestionably prostituted to the very interests that appealed to him, "granted the injunction." The men were asked for more time and they granted it: they submitted to the law. The capitalist was appealed to for a concession and he refused it; deceitfully asked for more time to consider the demand in order that his purchased jurat might have an opportunity to draw up the necessary document. And let all men observe that when the laboring man comes before the people and asks that laws be enacted which shall make impossible "government by injunction," they are called anarchists and nihilists and are told that they are attacking the most sacred institution of our nation. And let the laboring man observe that the arbitrary action of Judge Adams in St. Louis a few days ago will become the universal action of the entire bench if the laboring man continues to vest the power of the political machinery in the hands of either of the old parties. Let all men take notice that the laboring men "in bowing in submission to what is not law," are really observing the peaceful and orderly course, but that they are only biding their time when the power shall come into their hands through the movement of unionism and socialism. Capital will raise its voice in protest with tears in its eyes, but it will find that the time when consideration for it over the rights of all the people has passed. It is such acts as Judge Adams' that hastens the day of perfected unionism and accomplished socialism. Sioux City (Ia.) Star. "Government by injunction" seems to be enjoying a new lease of popularity on the part of employers who seek to evade the just demands of striking employes. They find it cheaper to have the courts settle their troubles than to face the music themselves. Lowell (Mass.) Sun. Sometimes strikes lead to trouble that justifies restraining injunctions. But a strike that never took place can not be trouble is anticipated by the judge who said to have caused any trouble; yet the issued the Wabash injunction. It recalls the act of the schoolmaster who whipped a particular boy regularly every morning, he might do. The judges who abuse the not for what he had done, but for what power of issuing injunctions will be reguis the worst kind of autocracy. lated in time. Government by injunction It can not last long in this country. Houston (Tex.) United Labor Journal. Thomas Jefferson foresaw in a possible corrupt judiciary the greatest danger that could menace the Republic, and the wisdom of the foresight of the author of the Declaration of Independence is not lacking of confirmation by current events. The temporary injunction issued at St. Louis by a federal judge against the Wabash Railway employes is the most monstrous usurpation of authority and disregard of legal precedent that this country has ever witnessed. Not only has the Constitution of the country been violated in issuing this injunction, but a well known precedent has been disregarded and a federal judge has proceeded as if this country was a monarchy and the money power were king, with no written law to confine the caprice of the regent. The common law of England seems to have recognized the right of laborers to organize for the purpose of fixing the price of their labor, because during the reign of Edward VI and George III statutes were enacted punishing workmen who conspired to reduce the time or to raise the price of labor. These statutes, however, were repealed in England years ago, and the law in that country is plainly set out in Reg. vs. Rowlands, 5 Cox C. C. 436, in which the court held that "the law is clear that workmen have the right to combine for their own protection and to obtain such wages as they agree to demand. This is a plain right upon which no doubt should ever have existed." The decisions in this country have been in line with the English decision quoted. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts, in Carrew vs. Rutherford, 109 Mass. 1, held as follows: "Every man has a right to determine what branch of business he will pursue, and to make his own contract with whom he pleases and on the best terms he can. He may refuse to deal with any man or class of men; and it is no crime for any number of persons, without any unlawful object in view, to associate themselves together |