Judge Henry Clay Caldwell, who was also on the federal bench at the time the Jenkins injunction was issued, declared strongly in opposition to it, saying:
“If receivers should apply for leave to reduce the existing scale of wages, before acting on their petition I would require them to give notice of the application to the officers or representatives of the several labor organizations to be affected by the proposed change, of the time and place of hearing, and would also require them to grant such officers or representatives leave of absence and furnish them transportation to the place of hearing and subsistence while in attendance, and I would hear both sides in person, or by attorneys, if they wanted attorneys to appear for them. * * * If, after a full hearing and consideration, I found that it was necessary, equitable and just to reduce the scale of wages, I would give the employes ample time to determine whether they would accept the new scale. If they rejected it they would not be enjoined from quitting the service of the court either singly or in a body.”
Judge Jenkins gave the employes no hearing, no notice, no consideration. He simply ordered their wages reduced and told them that if they quit work he would send them to jail. This is the order—and a beautiful order it is in a land of boasted freedom—that Judge Jenkins now says has been vindicated and that the precedent then established by him is now followed by all courts. He is right. The evolution of the injunction has indeed been swift and what was regarded as exceedingly novel and venturesome a decade ago is now securely incorporated in our established system of capitalistic jurisprudence.
The late Judge Dundy, of Omaha, notoriously the creature of the Union Pacific, issued the order reducing wages on that system when it was in the hands of receivers appointed by him, but Judge Caldwell, who was on the Circuit bench and had prior jurisdiction, took the case away from Dundy, had the employes come into court and be heard, and, after hearing all the evidence, revoked the order of Dundy, restored the wage reductions and administered a scathing rebuke to the receivers.
Judge Caldwell was appointed to the Federal bench by President Lincoln. They don’t appoint that kind of judges any more.
Such eminent lights as Dundy, Jenkins, Ricks, Taft, Ross, Woods, Grosscup and Kohlsaat now illumine the Federal bar and all their names are immortally associated with the evolution of the injunction and the subjugation of labor by judicial prowess.
One of the first and most illustrious in this line is Judge Taft, who won his spurs in the Toledo, Ann Arbor & North Michigan case. He has been a prime favorite with the corporations ever since, is now in the cabinet, and is being groomed for the presidency. As a candidate for the white house he has the two essential qualifications—unswerving loyalty to capital and unmitigated contempt for labor—and this should and doubtless will secure his nomination and election by an overwhelming majority.
In his published interview, Judge Jenkins, discussing his Northern Pacific injunction, says:
“Within the last twelve years, by reason of popular discontent at legal restraint, the issuance of this writ has been designated opprobriously as ‘government by injunction.’ Well, it is in a true and proper sense ‘government by injunction,’ for it is a government by law. The remedy has long existed and will exist so long as government by law continues, so long as we have liberty regulated by law, and not irresponsible, uncontrolled license to exercise one’s sweet will without regard to others’ rights, which is anarchy, and no howling of the mob can ever abolish it until government by law is wrecked and ‘chaos is come again.’”
Let me ask Judge Jenkins if he would be of the same opinion if at the time he cut the wages of the Northern Pacific employes and restrained them from quitting some other judge had issued an order reducing his salary as judge and restraining him from resigning under penalty of being sent to jail. That is the position precisely in which he placed the employes of the Northern Pacific, and it is this that he now calls “liberty regulated by law.” If that is liberty it would be interesting to know what slavery is.