Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1897-08-19
A Conflict Big With Results.

plainly expressed itself on the usurpa-
tiOu OF the functions of State courts
and the tyranny of individual liberty
practiced by members of the Federal
Judiciary in their unwarranted applica-
ton and expansion of the writ of in
junction. Certain Federal judges have
so applied this process that if their in
depreciation of the law and their exer-
else of authority under it were permit
ted to pass unchallenged and unchecked
our government would become an
ermined absolutism administered ac-
cording to the DEGREES of the assort-
ment of partisan lawyers vino occupy
places on the Federal bench. Iuva-
sions of the functions and duties pro-
perry belonging to the State courts
have been steadily going forward from
the side OF the Federal courts ever
since the power of corporations be-
came a controlling influence in our
national politics, and menace to the
perpetuity of our form of government.
For years these interferences by Fed
eral courts were insidious and yelled
under a web of technicalities. The
alarming proportions of their usurpa-
tory tendencies did not begin to dis
play themselves so markedly and enor-
mously until few years ago. when
ex-senator Spooner induced little jul
dicial satrap to issue a ukase under
the name of writ of injunction for
bidding underpaid employees of rail-
road corporation to quit working, IN
der penalty ofincurring severe punish
ment for being guilty of contempt of
court.
Under the Yankee inventiveness of
Hon. Dick Olney, the corporation law
yer. who acted as Mr.. Cleveland's At
tOrney General. this doctrine of gov
ernment by injunction was amplified
until it was stretched beyond every
thing hitherto considered compatible
with the bill of rights or the personal
liberty guaranteed by the constitution
to every citizen.
1t remained, however, for Federal
Judge from Arkansas, while taking a
course of baths in Colorado, to give
the already strained expansion of the
goverrm neutrality-suspicious. it's longest
and widest stretch of Interpretation.
The stand taken by the chief execu-
tive and attorney general of Kansas
against this attempt by United States
Judge Williams to nullify the legal
machinery of their State has the back
ing and approval of all right-minded
citizens Of Kansas, irrespective of poll
tics. These officials have gone about
the defense of the autonomy and au-
thority of the people of Kansas to
make their own laws in cOnsonance
with constitutional limitations against
the attacks of Federal judge in a
calm, careful and dignifed way that
is sure to deserve the commentator
of all thoughtful and enlightened peo-
pie. There is no defiance of Federal
authority in their motives or methods
of procedure; no "digging up of the
theories of secession" as some hyster-
ical ignoramus has asserted in one of
our contemporaries, but brave, firm
and justifiable effort to repel usurpa-
tion against the undoubted right of
State to have the laws passed by its
Legislature, and approved by its
courts, executed by the official charged
with that specific duty.
In bringing quo warran!o proceed
ings against the unlicensed insurance
company which is violating the laws of
Kansas under the convenient protec-
ton of writ OF injunction, issued by
a complaisant Federal Judge, Attorney
General Boyle has struck a lead that
ought to have two important and ben
eficial consequences. 1t will reaffirm
the right of State to administer its
domestic concerns without interior
ence from the extraneous and assumed
power of Federal Judge; and it will
open still wider the eyes of the already
alarmed citizens of other States to the
steady and dangerous invasion of their
rights by the judicial instrumental
ties of the national government for
furthering the rapacity and yielding tc
the demands of the corporations.-K.
c. Times.