The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1902-08-02
JUDGES AND THE MINERS.


The order of Judge Jackson Of West
Virginia to prevent the striking coal
miners from congregating in crowds
has created a great deal of comment,
favorable and unfavorable. One of the
best arguments against the stand taken
by these judges appeared in an edi-
torial in the New York Journal and
was as follows:
One more crime has been added to the
catalogue.
Judge Jackson by his injunctions
made it a punishable offense to ask
coal miner to join a labor union, and
now Judge Keller, another West Vir-
ginia jurist, has issued injunctions for
bidding the establishment Of strike
camps, which are established in con-
nection with the purchase and distribu-
ton Of food for the striking miners.
The law breaking railroads. which
mine coal Illegally and in defiance or
their charters. are to be congratulated
on the presence on the bench OF two
such convenient justices as these.
If they do not win the strike it will
not be the fault Of Judge Jackson and
Judge Keller.
The splendid response of the union
conference III the lu1ltGE u SLIlhC DCuC-
fits made it impossible for the coal OPP
orators to carry out their benefcent
scheme of starving the strikers into
abandoning their union. so this fnjunc-
ton, directed at the leaders of the ma
tional executive committee and others
charged with the duty of providing sup
plies for the men who are out on strike,
comes along in the very nick of time.
The encroachment on the liberty of
the miners is greater with every exam
pie of this misuse of the power of the
federal injunction.
There was a time in the history of
the struggle between capital and its
employees that it was a serious penal
offence for a man to accept or demand
more than a rate of wages SO low that
it seems incredible that workmen were
able to live at all. It was no mere
make-believe law either. and was but
tressed by another that made it pun
ishable by Imprisonment to refuse to
work at the prevailing rate.
1t was from this condition of slavery
that labor unions rescued the men who
do the worlds work
The injunction principle would again
bind the hands of labor and make 1t
absolutely dependent on the generosity
Of employers.
1t is not for the law to say that men
shall not join unions for their mutual
benefit, or that they shall not endeavor
to get others to join them OF that they
shall not form CAMPS or do anything
else that is not in itself unlawful. and
when the law is turned and bent to
make these things criminal. to the end
that some man or set of men may hire
workers cheaply, there is engendered
contempt for laws that may not always
be confined to the judge-made rulings.
The progress of labor has been over
the wrecks of just such obstacles as
these, and 1t is absurd to suppose that
this progress can be halted now The
injunctions Of Judge Jackson and Judge
Keller will never become precedents.
Whether they are sustained for the
present or not. they will soon be over
ruled by the court of public opinion.
against the decisions of which no in
justice can stand in free country.
Within a generation these injunctions
will be as great curiosities in the his
tory Of the struggle for better condi-
ton for laboring men as the old law
referred to above that made it crime
to refuse to work for a small and ar
bftrarily set rate of wages.
The law is what the people make it,
and the people of the United States will
never be party to the erection of such
tyrannical and one-sided rulings as
these into part Of the legal system.