Government by Injunction.
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interstate commerce, to an extent which highways, the interruption of which would be brought it within that salutary rule of equity attended with great and irremedial damages which justifies the interposition of a writ of to people in other States, and who had no injunction, when a great and irreparable in interest in the difficulty which it was sought jury is to be done, for which there is no ade to settle. In other words, the injunction is quate remedy at law. The injunction issu sued at Chicago was confined to its legiti ing out of the Federal court went no further mate sphere; to the preservation of the than this; it simply restrained the strikers, property rights of those who were engaged through their leaders, from interfering with in interstate commerce, and who had no interstate commerce. It did not prevent adequate remedy at law for the injuries them from taking any action which might which they must have sustained had the be permitted by the State, in matters over striking railroad employees been allowed to which the State had authority, but it did for interrupt its passage through the city of Chi bid them standing along the great national cago en route to its destination. arteries of trade and intercepting the produce "An injunction," says Bouvier's Law Dic of the manufacturers and farmers from States tionary, " is a prohibitory writ, specially remote from the scene of the trouble to the prayed for by a bill, in which the plaintiff's consumers in other States, and if the exercise title is set forth, restraining a person from of this undoubted right operated to embar committing or doing an act (other than crimi rass the progress of a strike which had nal acts), which appear against equity and reached the stage of a riot, which the State conscience." Or, to put it in another form, authorities showed no disposition to quell, an injunction is a part of the machinery of it was but one of the incidents of that power courts of equity, dealing exclusively with against which right thinking people have no property and civil rights, and is not to be in cause to complain. This was not an " arbi voked except in cases where there is no ade trary interference by Federal authorities in quate remedy at law, or where the damages local affairs "; it was the legitimate assertion are of such a nature that they cannot be of a power exclusively within the jurisdiction fully compensated. When, therefore, an in of the Federal government, and the mere fact junction is issued for the primary purpose of that it was located in Cook County, in the preventing an individual, or a body of indi State of Illinois, in no wise affected its general viduals, from committing a crime, it is usurp character. ing a power, and under the pretense of It should, however, be kept in mind, in punishing for the contempt, is in effect considering the question of " government by punishing the crime, without allowing the injunction," as it is presented by the more prisoner the benefits of his constitutional recent cases, and especially in West Virginia, right to a trial by jury. that the injunction which is looked to for a There is no warrant for such injunctions, precedent in dealing with labor difficulties and especially so when they are directed was directed, not to the merits of the strike; against the constitutional right of citizens not to the interference with the liberty of " peaceably to assemble, and to petition the those engaged in the enterprise, in so far as government for a redress of grievances," a it related to the right of individuals to as clause found in spirit, not alone in the Fed semble, and to take action which they be eral Constitution, but in nearly every State in lieved to be intended to accomplish their the Union. " The subject matter of the purpose; but purely and simply to the preser jurisdiction of equity being the protection vation of the rights of the public in the free of private property and of civil rights," says transit of their goods over the interstate James L. High in his great " Treatise on the
