The President ordered an investigation, and, as a result, proceedings
under the Sherman Act to restrain the great packers from continuing
their alleged combination. A temporary injunction was granted. The slow
machinery of chancery bade fair to work out a decree, but long before it
was on record, alert spirits among the packing firms evolved a new plan
not obnoxious to decrees, but effective for union.
If the public suffered from these phalanxed industries while they ran
smoothly, it endured peculiar evils from the periodical conflicts
between the capital and the labor engaged in them.
The Steel Strike of 1901 was a conflict over the unionizing of certain