It has been about fifteen years since the court injunction began to figure in labor affairs. It was threatened in the C., B. & Q. railroad strike of 1888, but not resorted to. After the Homestead strike, in 1892, during which Pinkertonism reached its culmination and this brutal form of warfare upon labor by Carnegie and Frick excited the most intense indignation, the injunction came into general use. It proved a great thing for the corporations, just what they had been looking for. No longer was there any need for a private Pinkerton army. That was a clumsy contrivance compared to the noiseless, automatic, self-acting injunction. The Pinkertons were expensive, cumbersome, aroused hatred and sometimes missed fire. The injunction was free from all these objections. One shock from the judicial battery and labor was paralyzed and counted out.
Since first introduced in the struggle between labor and capital the injunction has developed from the flintlock to the rapidfire. Judge Jenkins enjoys in his retirement the distinction of having contributed one of its chief improvements. His fame is secure and so is his infamy. He need not worry about vindication. He was as loyal a judge as ever bowed to Mammon, as faithful a tool as ever served his master, and as consummate a hypocrite as ever stabbed liberty in the name of law.
The injunction is playing its usual role in the teamsters’ strike in Chicago. The Team Owners’ Association of Chicago are incorporated in West Virginia and by this trick become an interstate association and nestled under the wing of the United States court. The Federal injunction to destroy the strike and rout the strikers has already been applied for and granted. This goes without saying. What are Judges Grosscup and Kohlsaat on the bench for? Certainly not for the health of the teamsters. They are there to do what they were appointed to do by the president of the exploiting capitalists elected by the exploited workers.
At this writing carloads of negroes are being shipped into Chicago to take the places of the striking teamsters, while injunctions, like swords suspended by threads, hang above their heads and ten thousand regular soldiers with shotted guns are on the edge of the city awaiting the command to sprinkle the streets with the blood of labor.
Oh, that all the workers of Chicago would back up the teamsters and garment workers by throwing down their tools and quitting work! Twenty-four hours of such a strike would bring the masters to their knees. But they have too many unions and too many leaders for this, and so they must fight it out to the bitter end.
In the meantime the evolution of the injunction is making for Socialism. Nothing more clearly shows that the labor question is also a political question and that to conquer their exploiters the working class must build up the Socialist party and capture the powers of government.
What’s the Matter with Chicago?
Chicago Socialist, October 25, 1902
For some days William E. Curtis, the far-famed correspondent of the Chicago Record-Herald, has been pressing the above inquiry upon representative people of all classes with a view to throwing all possible light upon that vexed subject.
The inquiry is in such general terms and takes such wide scope that anything like a comprehensive answer would fill a book without exhausting the subject, while a review of the “interviews” would embrace the whole gamut of absurdity and folly and produce a library of comedy and tragedy.