On March 7, 1893, Mr. Arthur sent to the chairman of the General Adjustment Committees of the Brotherhood on eleven railroad systems in Ohio and neighboring States the following telegram: "There is a legal strike in force upon the Toledo-Ann Arbor & North Michigan Railroad. See that the men on your road comply with the laws of the Brotherhood. Notify your general manager." A "legal" strike, as the term was used, meant one to which the Grand Chief of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers had consented, and meant the promulgation of Rule 12 of the organization, which provided in substance that after a strike had been declared against a railroad, it should, while the strike continued, be "a violation of obligation for a member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers who may be employed on a railroad running in connection with or adjacent to said road, to handle the property belonging to said road or system in any way that may benefit said company with which the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers is at issue."
In obedience to Mr. Arthur's telegram, representatives of the Brotherhood on various railroads notified the general managers of these railroads that after a certain date the engineers would refuse to haul cars or freight forwarded by the Toledo Road. Some of these railroads thereafter notified the management of the Toledo Railroad that in view of the threatened actions of their own engineers, they would be obliged to discontinue receiving or forwarding freight for the road. The Toledo thereupon obtained from Judge Taft in the United States Circuit Court an injunction against the Pennsylvania Railroad and other railroad companies, enjoining them from refusing to handle its freight and commanding them to perform their railroad functions as required by the Interstate Commerce Act, which made it a criminal offense for connecting railroads to refuse to receive or transport freight from one another's lines. Mr. Arthur was made a party, and the injunction, issued, and sustained after hearing, directed him to rescind his order putting into effect Rule 12 of his organization. The decree did not require the employees of these other railroads to continue to work for the railroads if they saw fit to strike, but it did require them, as long as they were in the employ of those railroads, to handle the freight of the Toledo Road as they would the freight of any other road.
The opinion which Judge Taft wrote in this case is a long one. He quotes the provisions of the Interstate Commerce Act, which clearly made it a criminal offense for the officers, agents, or employees of any of these connecting roads wilfully to refuse to receive and transmit the freight of the Toledo Road, and declares that the attempt of the Locomotive Engineers to compel the railroads to commit this criminal offense through this Rule 12 was unlawful. As to the rule itself, he says, after an exhaustive examination of it in connection with the provisions of the Interstate Commerce Law:
We have thus considered with some care the criminal character of Rule 12 and its enforcement, not only, as will presently be seen, because it assists in determining the civil liabilities which grow out of them, but also because we wish to make it plain, if we can, to the intelligent and generally law-abiding men who compose the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, as well as to their usually conservative chief officer, what we cannot believe they appreciate, that notwithstanding their perfect organization and their charitable, temperance and other elevated and useful purposes, the existence of Rule 12 under their organic law makes the Brotherhood a criminal conspiracy against the laws of their country.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers acquiesced in the criticism of this section of their laws and removed it. The fact that this organization is in existence today, unimpaired in power and authority throughout the American railroad world, is an indication of its willingness to recognize and obey the law of the land. Its conduct in subsequently withdrawing the rule shows that Judge Taft was justified in setting forth with such painstaking clearness the illegality of the rule, with the expectation that its illegality would be recognized and the rule abolished—a confidence which was justified by its results.
Phelan Sentence in the Pullman Strike
The next labor decision made by Judge Taft was in the well-known Phelan case in the great Pullman strike of 1894. The organization with which he was then called upon to deal was of a totally different character from that of the Locomotive Engineers. It was one managed in entire disregard of the law, the courts, and the public. Eugene V. Debs, the chief agent of that organization, the American Railway Union, is today the Socialist candidate for the presidency. In the Pullman strike of 1894 Judge Taft sent one of Debs' chief assistants—Phelan—to jail for six months. If his judicial conduct in this matter merits criticism, here are the facts on which that criticism must be based:
Some of us have fairly hazy notions today as to the Pullman strike and what it was all about. It began in May, 1894. The employees of the Pullman Company, engaged in making cars at Pullman, Illinois, went on a strike because of the refusal of the Company to restore wages which had been reduced in the preceding year. The American Railway Union, which then comprised some two hundred and fifty thousand railway employees which Debs had organized and over which he was master in control, later endorsed this strike and started in actively to make it a success. The principal means by which that success was sought was by declaring a boycott on Pullman cars. In Judge Taft's opinion in the Phelan case (Thomas vs. Cincinnati, N. O. & T. P. Rd. Co.), he gives the plan and scope of this boycott as follows:
Pullman cars are used on a large majority of the railways of the country. The members of the American Railway Union, whose duty it was to handle Pullman cars on such railways, were to refuse to do so, with the hope that the railway companies, fearing a strike, would decline further to haul them in their trains and inflict a great pecuniary injury upon the Pullman Company. In case these railroads failed to yield to the demand, every effort was to be made to tie them up and cripple the doing of any business whatever by them, and particular attention was to be directed to the freight traffic, which it was known was the chief source of revenue. As the lodges of the American Railway Union extended from the Alleghany Mountains to the Pacific Coast, it will be seen that it was contemplated by those engaged in carrying out their plans, that in case of a refusal of the railway companies to join the Union in its attack upon the Pullman Company, there would be a paralysis of all railroad traffic of every kind throughout the vast territory traversed by the lines using Pullman cars.
Phelan came to Cincinnati to carry on this warfare against the Pullman Company by paralyzing, if he could, all the railroads centering there. He did not stop even with the railroads using Pullman cars, but ordered a strike against the Big Four, which used none of these cars. On the day Phelan called the strike in Cincinnati, Debs telegraphed to him to let the Big Four alone if it was not using Pullman cars, to which Phelan answered: "I cannot keep others out if Big Four is excepted. The rest are emphatic on all together or none. The tie-up is successful." Debs replied "About twenty-five lines are paralyzed. More following. Tremendous blockade." A few days later Debs telegraphed: "Advices from all points show our position strengthened. Baltimore & Ohio, Pan Handle, Big Four, Lake Shore, Erie, Grand Trunk, and Michigan Central are now in the fight. Take measures to paralyze all those which enter Cincinnati. Not a wheel turning between here and the Canadian line."