nd
must whenever necessary, with or without request from State authorities,
remove obstruction of the mails, execute process of the federal courts,
and put down conspiracies against commerce between the States.

During the Pullman troubles, the judicial department of the United
States Government, no less prompt or bold than the Executive, extended
the equity power of injunction a step farther than precedents went.
After 1887 United States tribunals construed the Interstate Commerce Law
as authorizing injunctions against abandonment of trains by engineers.
Early in 1894 a United States Circuit judge inhibited Northern Pacific
workmen from striking in a body. For contempt of his injunctions during
the Pullman strike Judge Woods sentenced Debs to six months'
imprisonment and other arch-strikers to three months each under the
so-called Anti-Trust Law.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
Eugene V. Debs.

As infringing the right of trial by jury this course of adjudication
aroused protest even in conservative quarters. Later, opposition to
"government by injunction" became a tenet of the more radical Democracy.
A bill providing for jury trials in instances of contempt not committed
in the presence of the court commanded support from members of both
parties in the Fifty-eighth Congress. Federal decisions upheld
workingmen's right, in the absence of an express contract, to strike at
will, although emphatically affirming the legitimacy of enjoining
violent interference with railroads, and of enforcing the injunction by
punishing for contempt.

Federal injunctions subsequently went farther still, as in the miners'
strike of 1902 during which Judge Jackson of the United States District
Court for Northern West Virginia, enjoined miners' meetings, ordering
the miners, in effect, to cease agitating or promoting the strike by any
means whatever, no matter how peaceful. Speech intended to produce
strikes the judge characterized as the abuse of free speech, properly
restrainable by courts. Refusing to heed the injunction, several strike
leaders were sentenced to jail for contempt, periods varying from sixty
to ninety days.

Late in July, 1894, the President appointed a commission to investigate
the Pullman strike. The report of this body, alluding to the Managers'
Association as a usurpation of powers not obtainable directly by the
corporations concerned, recommended governmental control over
quasi-public corporations, and even hinted