interests depend, but in which human life itself is vitally concerned. Such is the state of the law. But, some one may ask, were there not some decisions that went a little beyond that? Did not Judge Rogers in one case and Judge Jackson in another case go a little further?

I venture to say that there has never been a case in the Federal courts; and if my friends on my right can disprove it, let them disprove it when their turn comes, and to that extent anything that I shall have said shall be robbed of any force it might otherwise have by being proved to have been incorrect in statement. I say let them cite a single case in which a court ever enjoined them from either striking (barring, of course, this Arthur and Oaks case, which was reversed in the higher court), or, if a labor organization, from combining for the purpose of either elevating and raising their condition or increasing their wages, or any other peaceable and lawful purpose whatever. The dead line has always been drawn where moral suasion ends and violence begins. You can take the cases of Judge Rogers and Judge Jackson, the most extreme injunctions, and they were in each case based upon acts of violence. I do not mean actually blows.

If a thousand men meet at the gate that enters into my property and form a gauntlet, and every man who wants to sell his labor to me must pass through a gauntlet of men, who revile him and use scurrilous language and menace him with threatening looks, my right to operate my work and the right of such workman to sell his labor as he pleases is just as much menaced as though a bludgeon were used. And every court that has had occasion to deal with a labor controversy has therefore held that "picketing"-an apt term, because it comes from war is just as much a crime as it would be if a bludgeon were actually used, because the bludgeon or blow is, after all, but the next step, as every intelligent man knows. Let them cite a case where any Federal court ever denied the right of men singly or collectively to quit work. Let them cite a case where any Federal court ever denied the right of laboring men to organize into associations. I have said that, far from disapproving of them, Judge Taft, speaking for the Federal judiciary, has said that labor organizations rightfully conducted are most laudable and promote the interests of society. Every intelligent man must concur in that.

Of course it is very easy to take a long injunction and pick out one sentence and divorce that sentence from its

Mr. LITTLEFIELD. Divorce it from its context?

Mr. BECK. I say divorce it, not merely from its context, but also divorce from the facts upon which it was predicated, the facts of the case. Because, after all, decrees are not intended as mere abstract declarations of law; they are intended for practical purposes, and when the chancellor finds a condition of violence that destroys the right of property and destroys the right of man to sell his labor, he issues a decree which simply protects property and the right to labor. It does not go beyond, and no decree can be fairly interpreted showing more than such protection; and, as I said before, if there be any such, let them prove it.

There has been a great deal said about the injunction in labor controversies. I read Mr. Gompers's address to your committee. It had much of force. There may be evils connected with details of procedure in the issuance of injunctions. If it be true, as Mr. Gompers

suggested, that these injunctions are made returnable a long time after they are granted, that may be a grievance which you should remedy so far as you have the power to do so; although my own belief is that there is never an injunction issued where the men, against whom it is preliminarily issued, can not come the next day into court and move to dissolve it. Such is the accepted equity practice, so far as I know. But, if that be not true, if the court can make it returnable at a time that destroys the strike before a hearing on the motion to dissolve, I think it is a grievance to be remedied.

Again, it may be true that the contempt cases should be classified, as one proposed bill had it, into direct or indirect contempts. There may be good reason for grave thought on the part of the legislative body as to when, if ever, jury trials should be granted in contempt cases. But is this committee going to say, as a committee of lawyers, that because one or two judges may have gone beyond the limits of their power, assuming that they have which I deny-gone beyond the fair limits of an injunction, or that one or two judges may have made the writ returnable longer than it should have been, that this immemorial writ, which in England and America has been found by judicial experience to be essential to life and property, shall be taken away altogether?

If you were going to deprive every court of a remedy because some few judges may have abused it, or which in some of its features may need correction, why the courts would be tied hand and foot with respect to almost every salutary remedy used by them in the administration of justice between man and man; and, therefore, if you think that some injunction cases should provide for a jury trial in cases where alleged contempts have been committed, such trial to be either in the discretion of a court or without it, turn your attention that way; or if your writs should be returnable forthwith or within forty-eight hours, legislate in that manner; but why should you pass a piece of legislation which not only puts the brand partiality upon the judiciary of your country, and which not merely paralyzes the hands of the courts in protecting life and property, but which goes further, according to the letter of this statute, and validates acts of two or more persons done in furtherance of a trade dispute, because they are, forsooth, in furtherance of a trade dispute. If you study your proposed act just one moment, you will see that "two or more persons" does not mean an employer or employee; it means anybody can do anything in furtherance of a trade dispute, assuming that the act would not be criminal if done by a single person.

You ought to call this bill a bill to repeal the Sherman antitrust law, as well as to deprive the courts of the writ of injunction. Suppose the Northern Pacific Railway and the Great Northern Railway had had a dispute with their employers, and in furtherance of such trade dispute had formed the Northern Security Company, where would your proposed legislation have left such merger? This act says that where two or more persons shall do any act to further trade disputes." Of course, it must have some legitimate connection with a trade dispute. Then it is to be validated and is not to be a restraint of trade. It may directly restrain trade; it may paralyze interstate commerce; it may stop every car running from New York to San Francisco; but, nevertheless, it is not a restraint of trade under this act if done in furtherance of a trade dispute. A more mischievous or

iniquitous piece of legislation has never been proposed to any committee of the American Congress.

Mr. LITTLEFIELD. I have been informed that Mr. Hoar stated it was not intended to apply to labor organizations in the beginning. What do you say to that proposition?

Mr. BECK. That, of course, was another statement of Senator Hoar that the courts at last reversed. He misinterpreted that statute in two respects, and that is why I want this committee not to assume that a narrow or restricted construction of this statute is going to be given it by the court.

Let me suggest this to the committee, because I must hurry on. What is there so terribly harsh about an injunction? Why, it is a most humane and beneficent way of dealing with problems. What remedies has the man whose property has been destroyed by the workmen, whose liberty is absolutely destroyed by the denial of the right to labor? Well, he can go and sue the combination who are intimidating and preventing him from working, for damages. Then he subjects them to prolonged litigation, even if he gets a verdict. They must either pay that verdict or, if plaintiff elects, go to prison, because it is founded on a tort, or he can prosecute them at common law for criminal conspiracy. In that event the man who is injured has the body of the man as a satisfaction for his wrong; but what good does that do except to breed further mischief? When a court simply says, after hearing both sides: "Stop; thus far and no further," kindly, humanly, gently, I say it is a most humane and beneficent way of dealing with a very vexing and difficult problem.

And to show that that is not my only thought, let me just remind you of what one of the most experienced of our judges said in the case in re Debs-a very famous case. In that case we can get an illustration of what this act would mean if this committee should ever pass it. Let me remind you of what the Debs case was. My statements are based upon the official records of that case. In that case the interstate commerce of this country was obstructed over twenty-one railroads, which had one hundred and twenty thousand miles of track. The paralysis was not merely due to the fact that employees had ceased to work, which they had a perfect right to do, but they, by their acts, prevented other people from working. There was the burning of cars, the derailment of trains, the destruction of signal towers, and, when these failed, there were assaults upon passengers and employers by howling and excited mobs, which occupied the streets of Chicago and terrorized that city. That city was in the position that Port Arthur is to-day. It was a beleaguered city, in which the people were slowly being starved by the cutting off of their supply of food and drink that entered into that city, and it was under those conditions that the Government of the United States was confronted with a problem.

What was the strike about? Were the employees of these 21 railroads aggrieved with the conduct of those railroads toward them? They simply objected to those railroads carrying out their lawful duty under the interstate-commerce law of 1887 to carry the cars of the Pullman Transportation Company; and because they would not agree not to carry the Pullman cars these employees of the 21 railroads brought paralysis to an interstate trade larger than the foreign commerce of any nation in the whole world. What were we to do?

The Goverment of the United States went into a court of law and got an injunction; and it is to the infinite credit of the workmen, as Judge Brewer afterwards said, that they at once obeyed that injunction and the strike dissolved like a snow bank in spring. Listen to what Justice Brewer said:

Indeed, it is more to the praise than to the blame of the Government, that, instead of determining for itself questions of right and wrong on the part of these petitioners and their associates, and enforcing that determination by the club of the policeman and the bayonet of the soldier, it submitted all those questions to the peaceful.determination of judicial tribunals, and invoked their consideration and judgment as to the measure of its rights and powers, and the correlative obligations of those against whom they complained.

Then he adds, as I have already stated, it was to the credit of the workmen, too, that they accepted the possibility of law as authoritative. Now, which was better, to have sent Federal bayonets into Chicago, to have sued the strikers for damages, which amounted to untold millions of dollars, to have arrested Mr. Debs and his associates and to have put them into prison for many years for having destroyed life and property in this country, or simply to go into a court and say to a judge, who after all is a permanent arbitrator and learned in the law, You are not interested in this controversy; you are not either employer or employee; here are the facts; let the other side show their facts; and now let us have the voice of the law as to whether interstate commerce can be paralyzed and life and property made a thing of no value in this country" And the voice of the court promptly declared itself. So much for the humanity of injunctions.

I have only a few minutes left, and I am going to pass to the third proposition that I ventured to address to the committee, and that is that this act will legalize unlawful and violent and, therefore, criminal conspiracies. It in effect declares that if for the purposes of Territorial government two or more men can do any act without its being criminal or without its being indictable, the same act, done by one man, would not be criminal. We are least concerned about the District of Columbia and the Territories. Those for whom I speak represent all parts of the country, and I pass the Territorial feature of it and come to the feature of interstate and foreign commerce. It says as to that, that there shall be no injunction or restraining order issued thereto, "thereto" being obviously the trade dispute between employer and employee, although I care not what interpretation you give it.

I assume, for the purpose of putting the most favorable construction upon it, that the provision is qualified by the proviso that the same act, if done by a single man, would not be punishable as a crime. Now, what does that mean? The United States, the statutory laws of the States, or the common law? I want to quote it exactly.

Mr. LITTLEFIELD. "If such act committed by one person shall not be punishable as a crime."

Mr. BECK. As a crime under what? It is an elementary rule of construction that the political sovereignty only legislates with reference to such sovereignty, and therefore when the United States legislates it legislates only with respect to the constitutional domains in which its. laws have operation, and therefore the construction which any court is bound to put upon that is, that any act of a person shall be validated if done in combination, if the same act is not punishable as a crime under the laws of the Federal Government.

Now, what crimes done by combinations of men are punishable under the laws of the Federal Government when committed by a single person? There is one to retard the mail, unquestionably. Therefore, if two or more men form a conspiracy to retard the mails, it is within that proviso, and it is still criminal, because if one man did the same thing it would be unlawful. But when, for instance, in the Debs case, the American Railway Union, as I have said, paralyzed 120,000 miles of railroad upon which they absolutely destroyed interstate trade at the great railroad center of the United States, Chicago, how were those acts of strikers punishable as a crime under the laws of the Federal Government? If there be such a statute, cite it. If there be no such statute, then perceive the abuses such a statute would inflict upon the country, because the union could do exactly what they did in the Debs case.

There is no specific statute under the Federal act which makes it a crime to derail property, to burn signal towers, to dynamite trains, to assault passengers. The Federal Government would by this act validate it, and it would be left to State tribunals to deal with such offense if after this legislation they could act at all. That is a very serious question for this committee to determine. But assume that "if punishable as a crime" means punishable as a crime not only under the laws of the Federal Government as such, but under the laws of any State. There are very few statutory codes that forbid picketing. It is a matter of common law; it is an unlawful conspiracy, and it is criminal under the common law in almost every State in this country; but there is no specific statutory punishment except in a few States, and, therefore, you are again confronted with the fact that the potent means of destroying property and, above all, destroying the liberty of 8,000,000 of men, who are not members of this Tabor organization, to work as they please, can be menaced, assuming always that this Government has any constitutional power to pass any such remarkable piece of legislation.

In that connection let me call your attention to the fact, although your body being learned in the law, it is hardly necessary, to the very obvious confusion in Mr. Gompers's mind between unlawful and criminal. He seems to think that this act is harmless because it does not validate anything that is "unlawful" for a man to do, but the act does not say so. The act validates everything done in combination, provided the same act is not punishable as a crime. I need not say to a body of lawyers that all things that are criminal are unlawful, but there are a great many things that are unlawful that are not criminal. To violate a contract is unlawful, but it may not be criminal, and therefore the very things that cause equity to protect property, as, for example, from "picketing," may not be in some States criminal, but it is at all times under the common law unlawful, and I think that is Mr. Gompers's obvious misunderstanding.

Lastly because I have gone far beyond my time-the bill is unconstitutional. It is possible that this committee, if it really believes the bill is salutary, will not consider its constitutionality because, you may say, unless its unconstitutionality be plain, that is a question for the judiciary; if it be a good thing pass it and let it take its chances before the courts. But I take it that as lawyers and members of the Government you will not pass this bill if plainly unconstitutional, and if this bill is not unconstitutional no bill ever passed by Congress