People Frequently Prejudiced

"The real abuses, however, flnd their chief cause in political corruption, which is wholly beyond the power of federal courts to prevent or eradicate. Too frequently tho popular impulse is to reinedy orpermit the evil by giving judgment against the Corporation in every case, no matter what the particular facts are, on the ground that the Corporation has probably increased its capital or attained success by corrupt methods. Under the fourteenth amendment the question whether legislation and state action may deprive any person of his property without due process of law has become a federal one. Prejudice against corporations has led to much legislation hostile to corporations. It takes the form of discriminating taxation, of regulation of rates to be chargod by those companies in quasi-public busi ness, and sometimes of the direct deprivation of vested rights." He referred in detail to the relation of federal courts to organized labor, espeeially to their action in issuing injunctions in the American Railway union strike. In this connection he strongly criticised the action of Governor Altgeld, of Illinois, in niaintaining that a conspiracy described in the Debs case was not unlawful. When the history of the great strike should be written in years to come the absurd expectations and purpose of its projectors and their marvelous success in deluding a nayriad of followers into their active support would seem even more difficult of explanation than it did today. The mind that would conceive and so far execute the plan of taking the entire population by the throat to compel them to effect the settlement of a local labor trouble in Chicago was that of a genius misdirected. If the combination and conspiracy deBcribed in the bill in the Debs case and enioined in the order of injunction was not unlawful, then there was no law in this country securing the right of private property, no law authorizing the federal government to opérate the mails, no law by which the regulation of interstate commerce was vested in the general government. A public nuisance more complete in all its features than that which Debs and all his colleagues were engaged in furthering could not be imagined. Has any iniustice been donetoDebü in his trial by the courts?" Judge Taft asked. "Is there the slightest doubt in the mind of his flercest supporter that he violated the iniunction? Why then complain of his conviction before a tribunal authorized to try himf"