"Government by injunction" is the complaint of the unions and it
is based upon the common, even reckless, use of a writ which was
in origin and intent a high and rarely used prerogative of the
Court of Chancery. What was in early times a powerful weapon in
the hands of the Crown against riotous assemblies and threatened
lawlessness was invoked in 1868 by an English court as a remedy
against industrial disturbances.* Since the Civil War the
American courts in rapidly increasing numbers have used this
weapon, and the Damascus blade of equity has been transformed
into a bludgeon in the hands even of magistrates of inferior
courts.
* Springfield Spinning Company vs. Riley, L.R.6 Eq. 551.
The prime objection which labor urges against this use of the
injunction is that it deprives the defendant of a jury trial when
his liberty is at stake. The unions have always insisted that the
law should be so modified that this right would accompany all
injunctions growing out of labor disputes. Such a denatured
injunction, however, would defeat the purpose of the writ; but
the union leader maintains, on the other hand, that he is placed
unfairly at a disadvantage, when an employer can command for his
own aid in an industrial dispute the swift and sure arm of a law
originally intended for a very different purpose. The
imprisonment of Debs during the Pullman strike for disobeying a
Federal injunction brought the issue vividly before the public;
and the sentencing of Gompers, Mitchell, and Morrison to prison
terms for violating the Buck's Stove injunction produced new
waves of popular protest.
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