sely allied, and had
a somewhat amusing test in Chicago where, during a labor strike, a
number of the strike sympathizers organized a so-called drill company
and furnished themselves with guns, for the purpose really of
intimidating the public and helping the law-breakers. Unfortunately it
so happened, for this purpose, that the first time they sallied forth
with sword and musket on warfare bent, they were stopped by one or two
policemen on the nearest street corner, taken to the station-house,
deprived of their arms, and locked up for the night. The next morning
a fine was imposed upon their captain, who appealed to the United
States Supreme Court without success.[1]

[Footnote 1: Presser _v_. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252.]

The legislation for giving damages for injuries to property done by
mobs was tested after the Pittsburg riots of 1873, and that yellow
metropolis was mulcted in heavy damages, which it took twenty-three
years to pay off. But no damages in this country were ever given for
criminal homicide directly, although there is an interesting case in
the Federal Circuit Court of a gentleman in Georgia who was awaited by
a party of neighboring gentlemen with the intention of shooting him
up when he arrived. One of his friends secretly got to the railway
station and sent a telegram to his wife, shortly to become his widow,
not to come. The Western Union Telegraph Company delayed the message,
its operator being in sympathy with the gentlemen of the neighboring
town, and the widow failed to recover damages from the telegraph
company. But these modern statutes in Ohio and the Southern States,
making towns responsible in a definite sum to the kin of a murdered
man, are the exact re-enactment of the early Anglo-Saxon law; except
that the blood damages--the were gild--were in those days put upon the
neighbors or the kin of the enemy.

"Organized labor" is hostile to the use of the militia, still more of
the regular army, in any labor dispute or riot resulting therefrom. It
is never justifiably hostile where actual offences are committed, but
there is something to be said, at least there is some precedent
for their hostility, in cases where by the accident of Federal
jurisdiction the whole power of the United States army is called in to
back up the injunction of a judge, perhaps improperly issued. That is
to say, if the parties to the dispute are citizens of the same State
the National government may not interfere except,