V
How far our legislators are enabled to withstand public sentiment, no matter how strongly based in reason and how definite in objective, may be instanced in the attitude of Congress regarding the Safety-appliance act of 1893. Agitation for this measure had grown to such an extent that action could no longer be delayed. But though action on the bill could not be delayed, the terms of fulfilment of the bill could be postponed to a comparatively remote period. The number of railway employees killed in the year ended June 30, 1893, was 2727, a number exceeding the Union death roll in every battle of the Civil War except Gettysburg, and within 243 of that record. In the same year the number of wounded (31,729) was more than three times as great as the number of Union wounded at either Antietam or Chancellorsville, and more than double that at Gettysburg. Yet despite this tremendous carnage, the legislators, wavering between the public demands and the demands of the magnates, though they passed the bill, generously granted five years for its complete observance, and then gave the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to grant further delays—in effect giving seven years for its fulfilment. In those seven years 13,906 employees were killed—a loss exceeding the Union death roll at Gettysburg, Spottsylvania, the Wilderness, Antietam, Chancellorsville and Chickamauga combined—and approximately 220,000 were wounded, or more than three times the number of Union wounded in those six battles. That a great part of this casualty record was avoidable is evidenced in the August report of the Interstate Commerce Commission, which shows that the number of employees killed in coupling accidents in the year ended June 30, 1901, declined from 282 to 198, and the number injured from 5229 to 2768. It was in 1893 that this generous latitude was granted the magnates. Were the occasion to arise now, it is probable that the term of grace would number fourteen years instead of seven.
CHAPTER VI
Our Interpreters of Law
The attitude of the judiciary in matters involving class antagonisms is a subject upon which only the most restrained language is tolerable. Even general inferences which suggest such a thing as judicial bias must be avoided. Faith in the rectitude and wisdom of our judges is a virtue sedulously preached,—perhaps most insistently by those who do most toward their corruption,—and though the virtue as we know it is rather vocal than immanent, it is sufficiently deep-seated to be intolerant of spoken heresy. Were it openly questioned by any considerable body of citizens, the foolhardy persons would soon bring down upon themselves the rallying onslaught of those heterogeneous elements which Karl Marx somewhat extravagantly pictured, “landlords and capitalists, stock-exchange wolves and shopkeepers, protectionists and free-traders, government and opposition, priests and freethinkers, young street-walkers and old nuns—under the common cry for the salvation of property, religion, the family, and society.” Such heretics might have all the certainty of Paul, “that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully,” and yet it would be a parlous thing to be openly sceptical of the assumption that it is always lawfully used.
But at least one may, without attainder of anarchy, assemble and classify certain instances, and point out their coincidences and their contrarieties. There is, for example, a notable sameness in kind of the laws which are declared unconstitutional. There is, to utter it mildly, a vast preponderance in the number of injunctions against striking, boycotting, and agitating over the number against locking-out, blacklisting, and the employment of armed mercenaries. There is a practical, though not an entire, unanimity against the awarding of damages to injured employees, whether the decision be based on common or statute law; and, finally, there is a considerable diversity between the decisions usually rendered by judges elected for short terms, and therefore directly responsible to the people, and those rendered by the less responsible judges, elected for long terms or appointed.