Hoffman v. Le Traunik

• Decision Date: 08 December 1913
• Citation: 209 F. 375
• Parties: HOFFMAN v. LE TRAUNIK.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of New York

209 F. 375

HOFFMAN v. LE TRAUNIK.

United States District Court, N.D. New York.

December 8, 1913

Nathan Burkan, of New York City, for complainant.

Dittenhoeffer Gerber & James, of New York City, for defendants.

RAY District Judge.

The complainant sues to enjoin the defendants from reciting and causing to be recited in public, vaudeville, or elsewhere the following:

'My dear Friends and People Workers: It give me great pleasure and joy to stand and undress myself before this large aggravation. You know, my friends, that I do not come out here before you as other political speakers, with falsehoods and lies in one hand and the stars and stripes in the other. I stand before you with an open face and a free mind, a poor, honest, sterilized citizen. I am for the public and against the people. I am glad I am capable of being a Philospede, and that I am pickled out to be a . This country is the finest country in the whole United States, a country full of mountains, valleys, and bluffs. Look at the wonderful men we have in this country. Rockenfeller says anybody can live on $18 per week. He don't have to tell us that. Let him tell us how to get the 18. The poor man has the same privileges as anybody else, run around in automobulls. Look at our streets. You don't see half the poor people on the streets that you used to see. Half of them are run over and the other half are afraid to come out. Look at our battle ships, the largest invention in the world. There is the great boat Muretania and the Lusitania with all the latest style equipments, two kinds of steam, hot and cold; we got telephones and elevators on the boats. If the boat is out in the middle of the ocean and starts to sink, the passengers don't have to drown; all they have to do is to take the elevator and go upstairs. Look at the wonderful big navy that the United States had got. We may not have the biggest navy in the world, but look at the big oceans we got. Last year we appropriated $4,000,000 for the navy. There are million people in the United States. Now that figures up to be a nickel a piece. What the hell kind of navy can you expect for a nickel. Look at the great men we have in the House of Misrepresentatives. We got men getting $5,000 a year, and what do they do. They set around and tell jokes to each other, and out of the salary of $5,000 per year they spend $6,000, and by the end of the year they have $100,000 saved up. Look at our weather bureau department, a man who tells us what kind of weather we are going to have, and by golly he doesn't know himself. If he did, he would lose his job. He gets $10,000 a year for telling us when it is going to rain. He gets up in the morning, enjoys breakfast, and smoke nice fat cigars and looks out of the window and says possibly nice weather to-day and then takes his umbrella and goes out for a stroll. Look at the large principals we got. As soon as a child reaches the age of six we send him off to school and he granulates, goes to scollege for ten years, and when he gets through he gets a job as school teacher at $60 per month, and when the janitor of the same school is getting $90 a month. Look at the high cost of living now. Eggs 60Sec. a dozen and rotten ones at that. Eggs are so scarce now that when we get good healthy ones we think there is something wrong with them. It is alright to pay that much for good eggs, but not when they are in their second childhood. Look at the price of meat. Meat is getting so high that it will soon be worth a lot more money, and pretty soon we won't have any money, instead we will be carrying around pieces of meat. You go into the bank, and instead of depositing a hundred dollars we will deposit a sirloin steak and for change we will be getting pork chops and sausages. This shows you what a chance a poor man has got in court. If the poor man steals a couple of dollars, he gets ten years and bread and water. If a corporation steals $10,000,000, they get 10 lawyers and a banquet. But there is one thing I can say in favor of our judges. If a poor man is arrested for committing a crime and he hasn't got a lawyer to defend him, of course the poor man gets the prosecuting attorney and he tries to push him in. The judge looks around and picks out a lawyer for him, you know, one of them good shyster lawyers, 90 years old and never won a case, but without that lawyer a prisoner has a chance to go free, but with such a lawyer the least he can get is life. That's why so many criminals confess, because they don't want to take a chance with one of those lawyers. Look back in the olden times in 1492 when Christenpher Columbum-- when Christman Col-- the time of 1492 when Christopher Cockeye Columbus-- Do you know what I am talking about? I don't. Every time I come to say that my tongue gets twisted around my eye tooth and I can't see what I am talking about. You know the time, the time when Warrington was washing the Hellaware, you know the father of Christenpher Cockeye Cucumbers. Look in the olden times, look at the great men what we have, Abraham Washington, George Lincoln, and Useless Grant. These three men fought for eight long years with England to give us back our freedom and think of it, if it wasn't for these men there would be 80,000,000 people walking around the streets to-day without a Constitution. Look back to the time of Adam and Evil. There's a man what had everything his heart desired and the damn fool had to get lonesome. Now that election time is over, we have elected a new president; we got to admit Wilson made a good race. Roosevelt said he made Wilson win. Wilson said Bryan made him win. At the time of the convention at Baltimore, Bryan got up and says, 'My friends, if you don't nominate Wilson for President I will run;' and they thought he might take a chance so they nominated Wilson. But we must all agree Roosevelt beyond a doubt was the greatest President This country ever had. There is no doubt of it. He admitted it himself. You know Roosevelt says he never drinks, but look at all the animals what he seen in Africa. Look how hard it is to live now-a-days; you can't even rent a flat. When you do rent one look at the trouble what you got. Roosevelt says, 'Increase the population, have children;' but the landlord won't allow it. What's the use of making a fool out of the flats. Roosevelt says he don't believe in race suicide. He believes that all young people should get married and raise large families, and then he wants the credit for it. Then the report comes out that Chas. Murphy isn't going to drink any more. He says he isn't going to drink unless he has Sulzer on the side. Now comes the Prohibitionists' Party. The Prohibitionists say, 'Down with drink.' Well, that's alright, down with it, but keep it down. The Prohibitionists are progressing more and more every day. Th

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