The temper of the country over the affair was well manifested in the press comments on the last decision. The New York Sun, which had roundly denounced the Court in the first instance, now joined in a chorus of praise: "In a hundred years the Supreme Court of the United States has not rendered a decision more important in its immediate effect or reaching further in its consequences than that which the Sun records this morning. There is life left in the institutions which the founders of this republic devised and constructed. There is a safe future for the national system under which we were all born and have lived and prospered according to individual capacity. The wave of socialistic revolution has gone far, but it breaks at the foot of the ultimate bulwark set up for protection of our liberties. Five to four, the court stands like a rock."
The Tribune, on May 24, added: "The more the people study the influences behind this attempt to bring about a communistic revolution in modes of taxation, the more clearly they will realize that it was an essential part of the distinctly un-American and unpatriotic attempt to destroy the American policy of defense for home industries, in the interest of foreigners.... Thanks to the Court, our government is not to be dragged into communistic warfare against rights of property and the rewards of industry while the Constitution of its founders remains a bulwark of the rights of states and of individual citizens."
The New York World, on the other hand, which had so stoutly championed the tax in behalf of "the masses," represented the decision of the Court as "the triumph of selfishness over patriotism. It is another victory of greed over need. Great and rich corporations, by hiring the ablest lawyers in the land and fighting against a petty tax upon superfluity as other men have fought for their liberties and their lives, have secured the exemption of wealth from paying its just share towards the support of the government that protects it.... The people at large will bow to this decision as they habitually do to all the decrees of their highest courts. But they will not accept law as justice. No dictum or decision of any wrong can make wrong right, and it is not right that the entire cost of the Federal government shall rest upon consumption.... Equity demands that citizens shall contribute to the support of the government with some regard to benefits received and ability to pay."
Although the conservative elements saw in the annulment of the income tax nothing but a wise and timely exercise of judicial authority in defense of the Constitution and sound policy, the radical elements regarded it as an evidence "that the judicial branch of the government was under the control of the same interests that had mutilated the Wilson tariff bill in the Senate." The local Federal courts augmented this popular feeling by frequently issuing injunctions ordering workingmen in time of strikes not to interfere with their employers' business, thus crippling them in the coercion of employers, by imprisoning without jury trial those who disobeyed judicial orders.
Although the injunction was an ancient legal device, it was not until after the Civil War that it was developed into a powerful instrument in industrial disputes; and it became particularly effective in the hands of Federal judges. They were not popularly elected, but were appointed by the President and the Senate (where corporate influences were ably represented). Under the provisions of the law giving Federal courts jurisdiction in cases involving citizens of different states, they were called upon to intervene with increasing frequency in industrial disputes, for railway and other corporations usually did business in several states, and they could generally invoke Federal protection by showing that they were "non-residents" of the particular states in which strikes were being waged. Moreover, strikers who interfered with interstate commerce were likely to collide with Federal authorities whose aid was invited by the employers affected. Whenever a corporation was in bankruptcy, control over its business fell into the hands of the Federal courts.
The effectiveness of Federal judicial intervention in labor troubles became apparent in the first great strikes of the seventies, when the state authorities proved unable to restrain rioting and disorder by the use of the local militia. During the railway war of 1877 a Federal judge in southern Illinois ordered the workingmen not to interfere with a railway for which he had appointed a receiver, and he then employed Federal troops under the United States marshal to execute his mandate. About the same time other Federal judges intervened effectively in industrial disputes by the liberal use of the injunction, and the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company pointed out in an article published in the North American Review for September, 1877, how much more potent Federal authority was in such trying crises to give railway corporations efficient protection.
From that time forward the injunction was steadily employed by Federal and state courts, but it was not until the great railway strike of 1894 in Chicago that it was brought prominently before the country as a distinct political issue. In that strike, the Democratic governor, Mr. Altgeld, believing that the employers had fomented disorder for the purpose of invoking Federal intervention (as was afterward pretty conclusively shown), refused to employ the state militia speedily and effectively, contending that the presence of troops would only make matters worse. The postal authorities, influenced by a variety of motives, of which, it was alleged, a desire to break the strike was one, secured prompt Federal intervention on the part of President Cleveland and the use of Federal troops. Thus the labor unions were quickly checkmated.
This action on the part of President Cleveland was supplemented in July, 1894, by a general blanket injunction issued from the Federal district court in Chicago to all persons concerned, ordering them not to interfere with the transmission of the mails or with interstate commerce in any form. Mr. Debs, president of the American Railway Union, who was directing the strike which was tying up interstate commerce, was arrested, fined, and imprisoned for refusing to obey this injunction. Mr. Debs, thereupon, through his counsel, claimed the right to jury trial, asserting that the court could not impose a penalty which was not provided by statute, but which depended solely upon the will of the judge. On appeal, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the lower court and declared that imprisonment for contempt of court did not violate the principle of jury trial.
It was not merely labor leaders who were stirred to wrath by this development in judicial authority. Many eminent lawyers saw in it an attack upon the ancient safeguards of the law which provided for regular proceedings, indictment, the hearing of witnesses, jury trial, and the imposition of only such punishments as could be clearly ascertained in advance. On the other hand others held it to be nothing new at all, but simply the application of the old principle that injunctions could issue in cases where irreparable injury might otherwise ensue. They pointed out that its effectiveness depended upon speedy application, and that the delays usually incident to regular judicial procedure would destroy its usefulness altogether. To workingmen it appeared to be chiefly an instrument for imprisoning their leaders and breaking strikes by the prevention of coercion, peaceful or otherwise. At all events, the decision of the Supreme Court upholding the practice and its doctrines added to the bitterness engendered by the income tax decision—a bitterness manifested at the Democratic convention at Chicago the following year.