Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1900-10-19
A TRIAL BY A JURY.
MAY YET BE A THING OF THE
PAST.
Vested Interests" CanuOt Trust Their
Cause to Twelve Men Honest Good
and True-Clarenos 8. barrow Draws
Some Deductions.

corporate power to enslave the work.
ing man. The nature Of governments
by injunction has been SO largely mis-
represented by the enemies Of the peo-
pie and by the public press, that very
few understand exactly what it means.
The courts are much more easily
reached by the rich than by the poor.
Most of the judges, especially the fed
eral judges, have been attorneys for
great corporations, and have studied
the social problems from the stand
point Of vested rights" They under
stand at once the position and atti-
tude Of the president of the corpora
ton. but they have no knowledge Of
or sympathy with the position of the
men who do the manual labor and who
really create the wealth.
For many. many centuries, in most
OF the nations of the world. the right
of trial by jury" has been established
and protected as the chief safeguard
of the common people for liberty and
life. While juries often make mis-
lanes, are oOIucLlluSS COIl anu Ii G
quently stupid, still they are drawn
from the common people, are free from
the prejudice of any class, and on the
whole can be relied upon to protect
liberty and life. On the other hand,
judges are not drawn from the COM
mon people. they are schooled in legal
bubble and legal forms, and have I'M
bounded respect for property rights.
Judges have never been friendly to
human liberty. That is inevitable from
their positions, not because they are
judges, but because they are men
clothed with arbitrary power. Trial
by jury" was instituted and has been
safeguarded because judges are not
friends to human liberty. The prose-
cutor and the judge have always been
close together, and very few people
placed on trial for liberty or life
would ever dream Of waving trial
by jury and submitting to the court.
The constant experience of judges
with so-called criminals goes to make
them believe that all men brought be-
fore them charged with crime are
guilty, and when these men are poor
and charged with crime by corporate
interests, by the rich and powerful,
from whose ranks. in most instances,
federal judges are taken, the presump-
ton of guilt is almost conclusive.
The constitution of the United
States and most of the states of the
Union provides that trial by jury"
shall be kept inviolate. But by legal
subtleties and bubbles this right in a
certain class of cases has been abso-
]utely destroyed in the federal court
and in many of the state courts of the
Union.
Whenever a strike occurs and any
disturbance arises between capital and
labor, the corporation or employer Of
labor Immediately solicits his lawyer
to go into court and ask for an in
junction. These injunctions are gen.
orally against violence and crime. In
cases of large bodies of men, an in
junction is issued by judge forbid
ding them to commit certain acts,
which acts frequently amount to crime.
Most of the decisions have held that
courts could not forbid these acts I'M
less the acts in themselves constituted
crime. After the injunction is issued,
If the strike continues, violence is Ii
able to result, for in a state of public
excitement, where great numbers of
men are interested, violence from the
fault of some one Is apt to occur. If
lawlessness results, or is simply claim
ed, complaint is made before the
court, and the judge is asked to pun
ish the defendant for having commit
ted an act in violation of the order of
the court. If the act has been actually
committed, he is guilty Of crime. He
can be arrested, indicted and tried, but
in this case he has the opportunity to
go before jury of his countrymen and
plead mot guilty" and he cannot be
punished or imprisoned unless the
jury finds him guilty of the offense
But IL a complaint is made before the
judge that certain individuals whom
some one wishes to prosecute have
committed crime, then the Judge sits
without jury to determine not
whether the man has committed the
crime. but whether he has violated
the order, which amounts to the same
thing. and in this way he Is found
guilty and sent to jail, purely by the
will Of the court.
The Debs case was good illustra-
ton in point. 1t was claimed in the
Debs case that acts Of violence were
committed from the Atlantic to the
Pacific. The Injunction forbade the
commission of unlawful acts. The in
junction ran against everybody in the
United States according to the holding
Of the Judge, and yet when the court
was called upon to send men to Jail
no complaint was made against any
man who had committed acts of vio-
lence, although many such were claim
ed and some such proved. but COM
plant was made against the president
of the American Railway Union and
everyone connected with him or his
Office. and no one else. 1t was not
claimed that these men committed vio-