Some Signs of the Times
By L. A. S.
The rapidity with which the way is being prepared for changes of a fundamental character in the government of the United States, is shown by events like the recent series of strike injunctions, of which the daily press has had much to say. The appeal of the capitalist side in labor controversies to the power of the federal government, and the issuing of writs of injunction against labor unions by court judges, marks the beginning of the transfer of the controversy to the realm of politics; and the end will be that labor unions will control the appointment or election of judges. The government will then be largely if not wholly controlled and made use of by opposing classes of the people for partisan ends. The resort to federal authority was first made for the purpose of protecting property and life from violence at the hands of strikers. Now, “government by injunction” has been carried to the point where the officials of a labor union are enjoined from ordering their men to strike, and the members of a union are enjoined from employing the boycott as a means of working injury to an opponent and bringing him to their terms. This is a construction and application of federal authority which the labor unions are by no means prepared to accept. It remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court of the United States will uphold this new application of the injunction principle, and it is believed that it will be upheld by that body. It then becomes a question how much further the doctrine can be carried. On this point The Independent (New York) remarks that, “once started in this direction, there is no middle ground short of complete restraint on the right to strike so far as the operations of a great public highway like a railroad are concerned. The necessities of the public are, in the mind of the court, a paramount consideration; but as the case stands now, the protection of the public is full of danger for the courts themselves.” As regards what may happen from the continued resort to, and extension of, the authority of the courts, The Independent quotes the following from Judge Tuley, of Chicago:— 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 injunction in their favor. I see no reason why a writ of injunction should not as well issue against a railroad, enjoining5it from discharging an employee or from failing to pay such employees a certain fixed rate of wages. “The labor papers,” The Independent continues, “are already murmuring, and their views are generally reflected in the following quotation from an editorial in the Scrantonian:— “Judge Adams has carried the principle a little further than was done in the Debs case; and if this preliminary injunction is made perpetual and becomes a recognized principle in law, it is difficult to see how organized labor can hereafter enforce strikes. The remedy may then lie in the overthrow of the political power that fosters government by injunction and the tyranny of great corporations; for after all is said and done, the wage-earners have it in their power to make the government of this country and the courts thereof just what they have a mind to. Mr. Ramsey, president of the Wabash system, is therefore playing with dangerous weapons in taking such a strong stand against organized labor. He may have law on his side,—that is a point we can not argue,—but if he has, the people have the ballot, and it needs only a little more of this sort of thing to make them use it in a manner that will long be remembered.” And this is not a mere theory as to what may be. “Already a judge of the highest court in New York has been elected mainly because the labor unions circulated broadcast the decisions favorable to them which he had rendered in a lower court. . . . Western labor unions have sent remonstrances to President Roosevelt against the promotion to a federal judgeship of a judge whose decisions have been inimical to them.” “We may add,” says this journal in conclusion, “that hostility to the courts under our political system ends in subserviency of the courts, and that when capital and labor enter politics to control the judiciary, the judges will sink to the level of aldermen, assemblymen, and congressmen.” When “government of the people, by the people, for the people” shall give place to government of the people by a class, and when the powers of the government shall be exercised to uphold the interests of one class of the people against another class, there will be no protection for the rights and liberties of the people, which it is the purpose of republican government to preserve. Popular government in this country will then be a thing of the past, and those who were formerly citizens will find themselves in the position of subjects. They will find themselves outside of the governing class; for, do not forget, the doctrine has already been set up and fully indorsed that the government derives its just powers from the consent of only “some of the governed.” It remains now to be determined, when this battle of class against class shall have been fought out in the political field, who “some of the governed,” whose right it is to rule the rest, are. The way will then be open for this government to act the part assigned to it in prophecy, and persecute those who refuse to receive the mark of an anti-Christian power, unhindered by any theories or principles of government to which the common citizen, merely as a citizen with natural, inalienable rights, could heretofore, under the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, appeal. Little are such scenes anticipated by the people now, but they will surely come. “We are standing upon the threshold of great and solemn events,” and these things admonish us to make haste while the day lasts; for the night cometh, in which no man can work. L. A. S.