The power of the courts to punish for contempt has, from the earliest history of jurisprudence and as far back as the annals of our law extend, "been regarded as a necessary incident and attribute of a court, without which it could no more exist than without a judge," and "a court without the power effectually to protect itself against the assaults of the lawless or to enforce its orders, judgments, or decrees against the recusant parties before it, would be a disgrace to the legislature, and a stigma upon the age which invented it." The Supreme Court of the United States declared in the Debs case that "this is no technical rule. In order that a court may compel obedience to its orders it must have the right to inquire whether there has been any disobedience thereof. To submit the question of disobedience to another tribunal, be it a jury or another court, would operate to deprive the proceeding of half its efficiency."[63]
The bait now offered to the lawless and misguided among the laborers of America by Mr. Roosevelt is the abolition of the only effective means of preventing violence and the destruction of property in labor disputes, first, by taking away from the courts the power to issue injunctions and, secondly, by emasculating the power to enforce obedience to their orders and judgments. Of course, if any such revolutionary and anarchistic measures were now embodied in the organic law of this state, as proposed by the Progressive state platform, the community would be placed completely at the mercy of the violent and the lawless. Is it not lamentable and humiliating to see an ex-President of the United States and an ex-member of his cabinet and ex-ambassador thus pandering to the mob spirit for votes?
In conclusion, I want to add that the American people know where President Taft and Vice-President Sherman stand on every great question before the people. They have been tried and not found wanting. These candidates can be trusted and relied upon to keep every pledge of their party's platform. If anybody can now tell where Governor Wilson stands, except as a free trader, a radical and an opportunist, he is much more discerning than most of us are. The glory of our party is that for fifty-six years, in victory and in defeat, it and its candidates have stood consistently and uncompromisingly for the principles of human liberty and human progress. It is still the party of principle and of progress, as it is the party of protection for American labor and industry. President Taft would be entitled to the gratitude of the whole nation, irrespective of party, if the only service of his administration had been his attempt in good faith to withdraw the tariff from party politics, to introduce some system in fixing the amount of necessary protection to be determined by experts and non-partisan boards, and to establish business-like methods of economy and efficiency in every department. Great honor, too, will the future historian record to his credit when recounting that in a period of political upheaval, of social unrest and discontent, of impatience with law, of pandering to revolutionary instincts, he stood as President of the United States firmly, uncompromisingly and sturdily for the right, and put all his trust and confidence in the sober second thought and profound patriotism of the American people, in their attachment to law and orderly progress, and in their determination that the American system of constitutional representative government "shall not perish from the earth."
FOOTNOTES:
[62] Address as temporary chairman of the New York Republican State Convention, at Saratoga Springs, September 25, 1912.
[63] 158 United States Reports, p. 594-595.
NOMINATING CONVENTIONS[64]
The Direct Primary Law of 1911[65] abolished all political conventions except the state convention, but the Direct Primary Law of 1913[66] went further and abolished the state convention, striking the article on conventions and even the definition of a convention from the text of the law. Although the new law contains in section 45 a provision that nothing therein contained shall prevent a party from holding a party convention, to be constituted in such manner and with such powers in relation to formulating party platforms and policies and the transaction of business relating to party affairs, as the rules and regulations of the party may provide, not inconsistent with the Election Law, it was clearly the intention of its framers that such party conventions should not deal with the most important subject which parties had theretofore dealt with, namely, the nomination of candidates for public office. Indeed, section 46, as amended in 1913, expressly provides that designations of candidates for party nominations shall be "by petition only" in the manner provided in the Election Law.