railway managers who refused to grant certain other conditions? Judge Adams seems to have assumed that the men would be at fault, but wherein is his justification for that assumption? Instead of protecting interstate traffic facilities by enjoining the men from striking, why should he not assume that the demands of the latter were reasonable and enjoin the company from refusing to grant them, thereby placing the burden of responsibility on the company?

This newspaper has had little sympathy with the outcry against "government by injunction" so loudly voiced in connection with other labor controversies. In nearly all such cases the strikers or their sympathizers were merely enjoined from perpetrating illegal acts of interference with the employers' business after the strike had been inaugurated. But an injunction which keeps one man, or several hundred men, at work unwillingly is another matter. Organized labor directly engaged in interstate traffic may as well prepare to go out of business if Judge Adams' principle shall be declared good law.

Palmyra (Mo.) Herald.

Judge Elmer B. Adams, who issued the injunction against the Wabash strikers, claims to be a Democrat, and the Demo: cratic party must therefore bear the odium attaching to his high-handed and unprecedented action. As a matter of fact, Judge Adams has not voted the Democratic ticket for the past eight years. It is high time that people who do not vote the Democratic ticket should cease

to style themselves Democrats. The party has enough to answer for without assuming responsibility for such characters as Judge Adams.

Toledo (O.) Times.

Following the Wabash precedent, hereafter no strike will be complete without its injunction.

Southeralnd (Neb.) Free Lance.

The Circuit Court has issued an injunction against the leaders of the strike. Just what the purposes of the injunction are is hard to learn. There has been no overt act or destruction of property on the part of the strikers. The court could scarcely enjoin the men from the common, everyday right to quit work, singly or in a body. The courts become ridiculous in their haste to obey the behests of the corporations.

Elizabeth (N. J.) Times.

The injunction in this case has been applied to an extent far beyond the limits of reason and justice, for, if it should stand, the only weapon of defense that can be used by the workingman will have been taken from him, and he will have no means of redress against the oppressions of inconsiderate, selfish employers. We do not see what authority the courts can possibly have in forcing a

man, or a number of men, to work when they do not want to do so. Besides, there is really no method of punishing those who refuse to obey an injunction of this kind, inasmuch as it will be quite impossible to prove that they are in contempt of court.

Dubuque (la.) Telegraph Herald.

Judge Adams is conferred-rather it is Authority for the injunction issued by the railway's contention that it is conferred by the Sherman anti-trust law and the interstate commerce laws. The statutes forbid combinations in restraint of trade in the cases of corporations engaged in interstate traffic, in which classification railways are embraced. It was the impression, as has been pointed out in these columns before, that these laws were directed against industrial trusts and railroads which discriminated between shippers and sections of country. They were passed in deference to the popular demand that the railways and the trusts be restricted. It was never the purpose to curtail the right of men to strike yet they have been employed effectively only against labor unions. Instead of restricting the aggressions of capital they have armed capital with a club to beat the workingmen.

It is for the court to determine authority to enjoin a strike. If it has the power and if it has the Republican party is responsible then the sooner it is divested of that power, the securer will be our personal liberties.

The rank injustice of such laws is palpable. A railroad company is an organization of persons having interest in the railway. The unions enjoined are organizations of the employes of the railroad. According to the St. Louis principle, it is all right for the railway to refuse as an organization, a corporation, to pay its employes higher wages, but it is wrong when these employes, formed in a union, shall, as an organization, refuse to accept these wages and go on strike. If it shall be contended that not the unions but their officers are the persons enjoined, the principle is still unaltered. It is still proper, as viewed by the Journal, to enjoin these union leaders and not enjoin the officers of the railway.

It is a denial of personal liberty to an individual to restrain him by court mandate from "persuading" another to quit work. It is an abridgment of his right to free speech. Yet it is possible that the Sherman anti-trust law authorizes this abridgment. If this shall prove to be the case, the Republican party must answer not alone to trade unionists but to all lovers of personal liberty as well.

Fairmount (Minn.) Sentinel.

"Labor leaders say that if the temporary injunction is made permanent a death blow will be struck at labor organizations in the United States. We see no reason to believe that this is an over statement of the case. Labor organizations will scarcely continue to exist if

they are deprived of the aggressive power of combination. Organization that can not threaten strikes and realize them will be in a poor position to advance the interests of their members in the struggle with organized capital.

"If the injunction in this case shall be made permanent it will be something more than a blow to labor unions; it will be a blow at rights of every individual. It will establish such a monstrous precedent for the extension of legislation and government by injunction that no man will be able to feel that he is safe from the tyrannical reach of some arbitrary judge.

"Whatever the decision may be as to the permanent injunction, the injustice of the temporary injunction alone is so great and so obvious as to suggest the need of some legislation that will plainly define the limits within which courts may issue injunctions. At present they seem to be able to enjoin anybody, upon complaint, for doing anything."-Minneapolis Journal.

While the above is all true and well stated it sounds strange coming from a Republican newspaper, which only a few years ago was among those who shouted themselves hoarse yelling "free riot!" all because the Democratic party openly arrayed itself against government by injunction. The Republican party is gradually and without appearing to know it, accepting or pretending to accept the Kansas City platform.

New York Commercial Advertiser.

We reproduce again this extract from Edward M. Shepard's speech in Chicago on Monday for the purpose of comparing it with other Democratic utterances upon the same subject:

"Can anything involve more danger to conservative interests than un-American interference with personal liberty, such as was illustrated by the injunction order granted in St. Louis the other day by a federal judge of ability and character? The order forbade the brotherhoods of Railway Trainmen and Locomotive Firemen from 'persuading' or 'inducing' certain brakemen, switchmen and firemen to quit the service of the Wabash Railway Company. No doubt the judge, when he forbade 'persuasion,' believed there was law for the prohibition. But if, upon the hearing, it shall be found so, then so much law ought to be forthwith repealed. Is it anything less than calamitous that in the armory of law, weapons should be found to restrain that kind of freedom, when thus far the armory of law has been racked in vain for weapons equal to the prevention of combinations expressly forbidden by statute?"

As we have said, this St. Louis injunction is based upon the same law that the Cleveland-Olney injunction of 1894, applying to the strikers in the Chicago riots, was based. Bryan said of the 1894 injunction, in a speech in Chicago on Labor Day in September, 1900:

"The attempt to use the injunction of a court to deprive the laboring man of

trial by jury should alarm all our people, for, while the wage earner is the first to feel its effects, the principle which underlies government by injunction is so far reaching that no one can hope to escape ultimately. The meanest thief and the most brutal murderer are entitled to trial by jury. Why should this right be denied the laboring man?"

The Supreme Court of the United States upheld this "use of the injunction," and Bryan was well aware of that fact when he made his speech. He had, indeed, caused to be inserted in his national Democratic platform of 1896 a plank which called for a reorganization of the Supreme Court because of its decision. In speaking in the national convention when the plank was under consideration, David B. Hill said:

"Was it wise to assail the Supreme Court of your country? Will some one tell me what that clause means in this platform? If you meant what you said and said what you meant? Let some one explain that provision. That provision, if it means anything, means that it is the duty of Congress to reconstruct the Supreme Court of the country. It means the adding of additional members to that court, or putting some out of office, or reconstructing the whole court. I will not follow any such revolutionary step as that."

Bourke Cockran, in the campaign of 1896, in his famous Madison Square Garden speech against Bryan, said of the same plank:

"It is a proposal not to amend the constitution in the ordinary way prescribed by that instrument itself, but to pack the court, to reorganize it so that it will pronounce those laws to be constitutional which the constitution itself condemns; a proposal to make the courts of law instruments of lawlessness; to violate that sacred pact between the states on which the security of this nation rests; to profane the temple erected for its protection by the hands of false priests who, though sworn to defend it, will be appointed to destroy it."

The plank was inserted unchanged in the Democratic platform of 1900, and to this day Bryan has at every opportunity denounced "government by injunction" in terms like those quoted above. Is Shepard getting into harmony with him? In what respect do the utterances of the two men differ?

Boston (Mass.) Commercial Bulletin.

The right of labor not only to combine but to strike as well is now conceded by practically all communities of advanced economic status. Threats, violence and. other malignant forms of social unrest are, of course, severely censured and enjoined; but as these are only incidental concomitants of a larger movement, human in its aims, the history of our country affords no instance of the denial of the right to strike where it has been employed for the purpose of securing legitimate and reasonable concessions from capital. This tolerance is based on the assumption that

labor as an element of production possesses aims fully as important and commendable as those claimed by capital. No other assumption could obtain in a society of superior economic training, let alone a democratic community.

But now, for the first time in the history of the country, this right has been nullified by an injunction issued in St. Louis by Judge Adams of the United States Circuit Court, which commands the employes of the Wabash Railroad absolutely to desist from in any way ordering, persuading or inducing directly or indirectly the employes of the said road to strike or quit its service. Heretofore injunctions have been issued only after the inauguration of the strike and confined themselves to the prohibition or molestattion, the destruction of property and the like, wholly justifiable precautions. But intended as this is to squelch even the attempt to institute an orderly strike, the Wabash injunction has no foundation in ethics or in history.

A storm of adverse criticism has naturally been aroused in which Judge Tuley of the Appellate Court of Illinois and former Chief Justice Springer of the United States Court of Appeals in the Indian Territory have both vehemently joined. The right to strike, they contend, is perfectly lawful and there is no precedent in our judicial history by which to justify Adams' injunction. "The day may come," says Tuley, "in the not distant future when the working classes will have political control and will appoint judges who will also issue writs of injunction--in their favor. I see no reason why a writ of injunction should not as well issue against a railroad, enjoining it from discharging an employe or from failing to pay such employes a certain fixed rate of wages. The judges are approaching a condition in which the governing power will be exercised by the judges with the executives and legislators as mere figureheads."

The vital problem which the statesmen of today have on their hands is that of the relation of labor to capital. It must be approached in a calm, unprejudiced spirit, with a sensitive apprehension of the aspirations of the former. A temperament such as that which prompted Judge Adams to take this unfortunate step is inevitably calculated to foster and exacerbate the present social unrest and postpone the final solution.

'Railroad Trainmen's Journal.

Not since the time that Judge Jenkins made his sweeping order against the organizations have we met with anything so drastic at the hands of the courts. There is little difference between the two injunctions and their purposes were the same, to prevent a supposed strike on the ground that the railways are common carriers and can not be subjected to a strike. If true, this means that a railway employe is a slave to his employer and that he is denied the power to exercise his constitutional right of deciding whether he will work or not.

As the writer is among the "and all others" who are under the ban of the court, no adverse comment against the injunction can be made because it could be regarded as contempt of court. The Journal has no desire to be regarded as holding the court's order in contempt.

The attitude of the brotherhoods in accepting the order of the court and at once suspending its operations on the Wabash, pending the settlement of the injunction, has been the means of bringing to their defense thousands who heretofore felt little regard for labor organization because in their opinion it was composed of a law breaking, ignorant mass of ungovernable men whose sole ambition was to embarass the purposes of the employer. The injunction, in some respects, is one of the best things that has happened to the organizations. While it has prevented the exercise of what law, precedent and decision have declared to be purely within our right, this very fact of itself will do much to assist in removing the absolute authority of the courts to interfere at the request of any one who desires to use the injunction to evade the law.

As the complaint was presented the injunction might find some excuse if none of the facts of the other side of the case were obtainable to disprove it.

The injunction will also lend its influence to secure the enactment of an antiinjunction law that will prevent further occurrences of this nature.

The members of the brotherhoods are law abiding citizens, they are intelligent and good workmen or they would not be in their positions with the Wabash. They have not indulged in any expressions of ill will or disrespect toward either the court or Mr. Ramsey. They have accepted the order of the court in the proper spirit and intend to carry the matter to the end in accord with the same spirit of fairness and regard for the law that has always characterized their efforts as organizations.

Springfield (Mo.) Democrat.

The Wabash says its employes have conspired to force a recognition of the union. They have possibly violated the Spanish law in force in our colonies also which prohibits conspiracies to raise wages.

Cigar Makers' Journal.

The illegal, unprecedented and outrageous injunction issued by JudgeAdams in the Wabash difficulty, while bad law and unwarranted, if violated by the railway organizations, would probably have been followed by a suit for damages similar to the Taff Vale affair. Who knows but what the railway company expected the injunction to be violated? The situation is serious enough to warrant us in urging all organizations and all members thereof to close up the ranks and carefully guard every step that is taken. All trade union laws and rules should be strictly obeyed and complied with in the entirety. Recent history shows that some of the or

ened to be done is lawful, it can not be made unlawful by giving it a name which imports an illegal act. Names are not things. It is the thing done or threatened to be done that determines the quality of the act, and this quality is not changed by applying to the act an opprobrious name or epithet; unless the definition of the words fits the act, the definition is false as applied to the act."

Hopkins v. Oxley Stave Co., 83 Fed.
Rep., at p. 944.
See also opinion of Justice Holmes in
Vegelahn v. Gunter (Mass.), 44 N.
E. Rep. 1079.

What the Facts Are.

The facts in this case are, as distinctly shown by the answer of the defendants, the affidavits filed in support thereof, and all the correspondence between the defendants and the officers of the complainant company, that about all of its trainmen, switchmen and firemen were desirous of obtaining a schedule of wages, in most instances an advance over that which they had been receiving, as well as the adoption of certain rules which would govern their relations with the company as employes. To the end that their wishes might be accomplished, they sent representatives selected from among themselves to St. Louis to confer upon the subject with the management. At first the president of the complainant company would not meet them, but did so later, and for months kept the committee waiting. He finally refused to grant a rate of wages or to adopt rules which were satisfactory. A statement of all the facts were submitted by the committee to those whom they represented, and the latter by their votes expressed their purpose of withdrawing from the service of the Wabash Company unless it immediately conceded the wages and rules that had been previously presented

to the company.

Not a Single Element of Unlawfulness.

In all the proceedings and steps taken, as the evidence clearly shows, none of the defendants went beyond legal bounds. In fact, they did not go as far as they might have gone, for, as a matter of law, they might, under the circumstances, have advised and urged the men whom they represented to withdraw from the service of the company. But in all the evidence it is clear that they did not even seek to influence the will of any employes engaged in the engine or train service upon the system.

Thomas vs. Cincinnati, N. O & T. P.
Co., 62 Fed. Rep. 319.

Charges of Intimidation, Etc.

The charges of intimidation or compelling the employes engaged in the engine and train service to do anything against their will or judgment is so apparently without even the slightest foundation that it seems as if it should be unnecessary for the defendants to deny it, because the circumstances and conditions existing in this case absolutely disproves the charge. It must be borne in mind that the complainant sets forth in its bill that the employes operate upon its lines in seven different States, as well as the Dominion of Canada. It is fair to assume, then, that the lines of the company extend over many thousands of miles of territory, and that the employes are all outside of the city of St. Louis, except a small minority. This being true, how could these defendants in St. Louis compel or intimidate or unduly influence an employe in New York, in Michigan, in Ohio, or in any of the other places, against his own judgment or will?

The work in the engine and train service is one of the most exacting of any labors in great industrial undertakings. Many things occur daily in the service which not only call for the exercise of the highest faculties of the mind, but also for the exercise of the most daring courage, even to the sacrifice of the life of the employe in order that other lives may be saved, as well as the property of the employer, and for complainant to attempt to make it appear that any committee of employes in St. Louis could and is coercing all or any number of these employes, insults the manhood of each of them, misleads the court and puts complainant in such a ridiculously absurd position that it does neither justice to its employes nor credit to the common knowledge which its officers possess.

The Employes are Not Complaining.

At what point are the employes complaining of ill-treatment, of being coerced and the like, at the hands of any of the defendants? In the case of Holden vs. Hardy, the employer bewailed the injurious effects of the law upon the employe and was sharply rebuked by Justice Brown, who used the following language:

"It may not be improper to suggest in this connection that although the prosecution in this case was against the employer of labor, who apparently under the statute is the only one liable, his defense is not so much that his right to contract has been infringed upon, but that the act works a peculiar hardship