The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-10-29
AN OPEN LETTER.
Edmund smph Psplies to Thomas
.fzof Hot Springs.
RAPID CITY, Oct. %, 1897.
THOMAS WELLS Esq,

Hot Springs, S. D.
FRIEND TOM:-Yours of recent date
at hand and contents noted. I also see
by the Hot Springs Star that you have
taken the liberty to publish extracts
from my letter and also parts of your
answer to the same. Do you think it
fair to publish garbled parts of cores
p%ondence between yourself and YOUR
friends: It :eems to me that if O
had desired to be fair you would have
published ALL OF these letters. I have
no objection to a friend publishing let
tiers OF mine if he so desires, but | hope
in the future when you desire to "get
into print you viii be fair with YOUR
sell and your correspondents and pub
lish all or none. Now, Tom, you might
have published that part of your letter
referring to your re-conversion to re-
p~ub'icanism, giving date of same as
March p, 1897 the equinox). It is
usually expected at that time Of year
there will be great atmospheric chang
es and disturbances, but yours is the
first case on record where it is known
to have affected a mans politics. Now.
while you do not say there was any.
thing miraculous about your CONVEX
sion, that is, there vas 20 "light shin
ing round about you,' in other words
1T was like Paul'S-sudden and unex-
pected, When I wrote you l did not
know of your recent conversion. ]
knew you had been elected to your
present office or the silver ticket and I
wrote you as d silver man.
You state in your answer that a part
of my letter "abounded in such dema-
gogery that you would not answer it,"
| suppose you refer to that part which
touched upon government by i%njunc-
tion," and 1 certainly agree with you
that a Judge should enforce the law
without regard to consequences, and I
know of no one advocating any differ
ent theory. but there is a feeling of op-
position to judicially-made laws, all of
which have been in the interests of
concentrated capital. I cite you a few
cases: the Debs injunction: the i%ujunc-
ton against the miners in P~ennsyIva-
MIA and West Virginia, and the recent
case in Iowa where the Judge restrain
ed the editor of a silver paper from
publishing letters written by Senator
Allison and from commenting on the
contents thereof either through his pa
per or otherwise''-could not discuss
their contents at home with the mem
bers of his own household! Do you
think these decisions are supported
and sustained by the constitution of
the United States. any legislative en-
actment or any judicial decision prior
to this era of injunction in this coun-
try: You know they are not, and you
also know that if the striking miners
of Pennsylvania and West Virginia
had applied to the same judge for an
Injunction to restrain the mine. owners
from holding meetings to ''discuss
their grievances or to restrain them
from walking on the public highway,
either singly or in pairs" their aprli-
cation would have been denied, and
the great metropolitan papers would
have published heavy editorials de-
nouncing the attorney who made the
application for attempting to "violate
the constitutional guarantee to every
citizen, and to divide and inhame the
classes against the masses" Greal
cartoons would have been printed de-
scribiug the attorney as a wild-eyed an
archist with a fire brand IN one hand
a dynamite bomb in the other, with
hair and whiskers full of cooked burrs
1t is such decisions as these that are
causing our people to lose faith in OuI
judiciary. If it is demagogery to OPP
pose an unlawful invasion of the right
of the people, whether that invasion
be by the judiciary or by an armet
force. there has been many dema
gogues in this country, including thos
''~anarchists'' who threw the tea int
Boston harbor, signed the declaratio