Southern Ry. Co. v. Machinists' Local Union No. 14

• Decision Date: 01 October 1901
• Citation: 111 F. 49
• Parties: SOUTHERN RY. CO. v. MACHINISTS' LOCAL UNION NO. 14 et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Tennessee

111 F. 49

SOUTHERN RY. CO. v. MACHINISTS' LOCAL UNION NO. 14 et al.

United States Circuit Court, W.D. Tennessee.

October 1, 1901

F. P Poston, for plaintiff.

A. B Pittman, for defendants.

HAMMOND J.

Adhering as I do to the opinion expressed in the case of American Steel & Wire Co. v. Wire Drawers' & Die Makers' Unions Nos. 1 and 3 (C.C.) 90 F. 598, and believing that this case, like that, is to be governed by the case of In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564, 15 Sup.Ct. 900, 39 L.Ed. 1092 nothing further need be said as to the law of this case. And it only requires that we shall give attention to the facts proven, in order to determine if they justify the same judgment as in those cases. But before doing this I wish to cite for our instruction an article which has fallen under my notice since the argument in this case began. It is entitled 'Personal Liberty and Labor Strikes,' and appears in the current October number of the North American Review (volume 173, p. 445). It is written by the Most Reverend Archbishop Ireland, and presents the law governing this case so accurately and tersely that I desire to adopt it as my own judgment, and to quote from it certain passages pertinent to this case. No lawyer or judge, within my reading, has stated the principles of judgment controlling the courts in these cases more aptly, though untechnically, than this learned prelate. Quoting, for illustration, from an English statute of 1875, passed for the aid and enlargement of the rights of the labor unions in conducting strikes, he calls attention to the prohibitions of that act defining what the strikes may not do. Now we have no act of parliament, which was passed to confer upon labor unions larger powers because under the common law of conspiracy and the like they could not do what the act permits, and it is this more restrictive common law which governs this and other American courts where no legislation has been had in aid of the strikers. Indeed, in Tennessee, as we shall see presently, what legislation we have is hostile to the strikers, and possibly more restrictive on them than the common law of the state otherwise would be. But the prohibitions of the English act formulate those of our own law and those which existed in England before their act, and they were only inserted lest the act itself might have been taken to abolish those prohibitions. This statement is supported by the Debs Case, and those which before or since have enunciated the same doctrine. For this court it is a closed question, by the authority of the supreme court of the United States, and no longer open for debate. We are not now concerned with what the strikers properly may do in furtherance of their strike, but only with what our law forbids them to do. It forbids, without statute, precisely the same things this English act forbids, and punishes criminally; and by the authority of the Debs Case a court of equity will, in a proper case, restrain by injunction the doing of those same things. These, as quoted by Archbishop Ireland, and approved by him as expressing the moral and Christian as well as the municipal law, are as follows:

'Every person who, with a view to compel any other person to abstain from doing or to do any act which such other person has a legal right to do, or abstain from doing, wrongfully and without legal authority uses violence or intimidates such other person, or his wife, or children, or injures property; or persistently follows such other person about from place to place; or hides any tools, clothes, or other property, owned or used by such other person, or deprives him of, or hinders him in the use thereof; or watches or besets the house or other place where such other person resides or works, or carries on business or happens to be, or the approach to such house or place; or follows such person with two or more other persons in a disorderly manner or through any street or road, shall on conviction be punished as provided,' etc.

The proof before us shows that the defendant strikers have violated every one of these prohibitions of our law, so conveniently formulated by this English statute, except hiding tools and intimidating the wives and children of the 'scabs.' Quoting from a South Carolina case in 1894, this distinguished priest, who lends his influence to correct the evil of unlawful violence in conducting strikes, again states the categories of unlawful acts thus:

'By threats, menace, intimidations, and opprobrious epithets addressed to plaintiff company's officers and workmen, and by gathering in crowds about the company's place of business and at the boarding places of their workmen, and by following said workmen to and from their work, stopping them on the highways, interfering with them in their work, and by holding them up to ridicule and contempt of bystanders.'

Here again is a list of acts which is almost the same as in the above-quoted English statute that are not permitted to strikers, and the American cases could be cited in considerable numbers to the same effect; but, as before stated, it is no longer an open question since the decision of the Debs Case, and it is unnecessary to cite them here. This extract is made to say that the proof here shows that quite every one of the acts mentioned in the South Carolina case above quoted has been committed by the defendant strikers in this case.

Archbishop Ireland also abstracts from a Massachusetts case the principle which forbids such conduct in the management of strikes. It finds expression in the title of his article, as it finds the most able exposition in his argument; and I wish I might quote the whole of it, but abstain, though the article is comparatively brief, considering the importance of the subject in the law of our social order. It is the principle of personal liberty so guarantied by our constitution that it is altogether doubtful if any kind of legislation could change the law so as to favor the labor unions by permitting them to secure their strikes by doing any of the now prohibited acts. The English parliament might do this, but it is not certain that any American legislature, state or national, could. Says the Massachusetts case quoted by the archbishop:

'Freedom is the policy of this country. But freedom does not imply a right in one person, either alone or in combination with others, to disturb or annoy another, either directly or indirectly, in his lawful business or occupation, for the sake of compelling him to buy his peace.'

He states that the acts of violence and intimidation covered by the quoted statutes and decisions are less detrimental to personal liberty than those the happen under our own eyes, and expresses wonder that in America, where personal liberty is best safeguarded, 'such things are tolerated by state authorities who are either unwilling or unable to repress them,' which is really the chief reason why resort must be had to the courts of equity; ordinary police protection being ineffective in fact, whatever cause may produce that inefficiency, as to which cause it is not necessary that the court of equity should inquire, the condition of nonprotection in fact being all with which it is concerned.

The suggestion that the same constitution which safeguards the personal liberty of the 'scab' and his employer guaranties to its violators trial by jury for their crimes or offenses arising out of the violation is not an answer to the fact that prosecutions and consequent convictions are either wholly wanting or ineffective for the protection of the 'scabs' and their employers. The Debs Case settles that the same constitution also guaranties the equitable remedy. It is not, indeed, as the able counsel of defendants argued that it is not, a concurrent remedy with that afforded by criminal prosecution; and it is one dependent, as he says, upon conditions among which mere police failure is not included, but that failure is none the less the occasion of the resort to equity, -- the paramount necessity for it. The equitable remedy is a wholly independent one, arising out of conditions of inadequacy of that other likewise wholly independent remedy of an action at law for damages; and upon neither of these does the remedy of criminal prosecution have the least bearing, except that, if the criminal law be so thoroughly executed that there could be no violations of or offenses against the personal liberty of the 'scabs' and their employers, there would then be no occasion for actions at law for damages or bills in equity for injunction. That is all the relation that the criminal law has to such suits as this. In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564, 594, 15 Sup.Ct. 900, 39 L.Ed. 1092. On this view it may be conceded, also, that while in the Cleveland Strike Case, cited in the beginning of this opinion, as counsel says, there was sympathy with the striking violators of the law and helpful abstention by the police from all interference, here the proof shows that the mayor and chief of police allowed the special policemen selected and paid by the plaintiff company to guard the workshop, and refused the demand of the strikers that they should be removed. Still this was not effective to stop the unlawful conduct of the strikers, and, in any event, has no bearing on the right of the plaintiff company to the relief asked, as we have endeavored to show.

Returning to the article already quoted, I may adopt from it the answer it makes to another argument made in this case,-- that the labor union here impleaded is not responsible for the disorders proven, and that it set out to conduct the strike peaceably and according to lawful restraints. The writer says:

'And, indeed, acts of violence do occur in connection with strikes, which the labor unions do not

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