Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1908-12-10

them, refusing all compromise. stating they
wished the principle of that bill or nothing.
They insisted on a provision that in a
labor dispute no Injunction should issue
except to protect a property right and Spe-
cihcally provided that the right to carry
on business should not be construed as
property right; and in a second provision
their bill made legal in a labor dispute
any act or agreement by or between two
or more persons that would not have been
unlawful If done by a single person. In
other words, this bill legalized Dlacklisting
and bOycotting in every form, legaliZing,
for instance, those forms of the secondary
boycott which the anthracite coal strike
commission so unreservedly condemned;
While the right to carry on a buSi was
explicitly taken out from under that pro-
lection which the law throws over proper
should be trial by jury in contempt cases,
thereby most seriously importing the au-
thority of the courts. All this represented
course of policy which, if carried out,
would mean the enforcement of class priv
1lege IN its crudest and most brutal form,
and the destruction of one of the most
essential functions of the Judiciary in all
civilized lands.
The violence of The crusade for this legis-
lation, and its complete failure, illustrate
two truths which it is essential our people
should learn. In the first place, they ought
to teach the wOrkingman, the laborer, the
wageWorker, that by demanding what is
improper and impossible he plays into the
hands of his foes. Such a crude and vi
CIOuS dIIdCh upon the courts, even IL 1t were
temporarily successful, would inevitably in
the end cause a violent reaction and would
band the great mass of CT izens together,
forcing them to stand by al the judges,
competent and incompetent alike, rather
than to see the wheels of justice stopped.
movement of this kind can ultimately re-
suit in nothing but damage to those in
whose behalf it is nominally underta ken.
The wageworkers, the workingmen, the
laboring men of the country by the way in
which they repudiated the effort to get
them to cast their votes in response to an
appeal to class hatred, have emphasized
their sound patriotism and Americanism.
The whole country has cause to feel pride
In this attitude of sturdy independence in
this uncompromising insiStence upon acting
simply as good citizens, as good Americans,
without regard to fancied-and improper
class interests. Such an attitude is an OBJ
ject lesson in good citizenship to the en-
tire nation.
But the extreme reactionaries, the per-
sons who bind themselves to the wrongs
now and then committed by the courts on
laboring men, should also think seriously
as to what such movement as this por-
tends. The judges who have shown them
selves able and willing effectively to check
the dishonest activity of the very rich man
who works iniquity by the Encouragement
of corporations, who have shown them
selves alert to do justice to the wagework-
er, and sympathetic with the needs of the
mass OF our people, so that the dweller in
the tenement houses, the man who prac-
tees a dangerous trade, the man who is
crushed by excessive hours of labor, feel
that their needs are understood by the
courts-these judges are the real bulwark
of the courts; these judges, the judges of
the stamp of the President-elect who have
been fearless in opposing labor when it
has gone wrong, but fearless also in hold
ing to strict account corporations that work
iniquity, and far-sighted in seeing that
the workingman gets his rights, are the
men of all others to whom we owe it that
the appeal for such violent and mistaken
legislation has fallen on deaf ears, that the
agitation for its passage proved to be with
out substantial basis. The courts are
jeoparded primarily by the action of these
ability or unwillingness to put a stop to
the wrongdoing of very rich men under
modern industrial conditions, and inability
or unwillingness to give relief to, men of
small means or wdgeworkers who are
crushed down by these modern industrial
conditions; who, in other words, fail to
understand and apply the needed remedies
for the new wrongs produced by the new
and highly complex social and Industrial
civilization which has grown up in the
last half century.
For many of the shortcomings of justice
themselves to blame and the judges and
jules merely bear their share together with
the public a whole. 1t is discreditable to
us as a people that there should be diff
Guilty in convicting murderers, or in bring
ing to justice men who as public servants
have profted by the corruption of public
servants. The result is equally unfoftu-
nate whether due to hairSplitting techni-
caiities in the Interpretation of laws by
judges, to sentimentality and class con-
sciousness on the part of juries, or to hys-
terra and senSationalism in the daily press.
For much of this failure of justice no re-
sponSibility whatever lies on rich men as
such. We who make up the mass of the