This proclamation the court relied upon as a public document, and as a correct statement of the facts, saying:

"A wrong exists; rights have been infringed; unoffending citizens have been maltreated; the law has been overriden. The question is whether a court of chancery can exercise its power to restrain the further commission of the acts herein complained of. The unrestrained execution of the designs, which it would seem from the record in this case the defendants entertain, would result unfortunately. Carried to their logical conclusion, the owner of property would lose its control and management. It would be worked by such laborers, during such hours, at such wages, and under such regulations, as the laborers themselves might direct. Under such rule its possession would become onerous. Enterprises employing labor would cease, and, instead of activity and plenty, idleness and want would follow. Unfortunately, combinations of labor are met by associations of employers, each trying to baffle what it deems the aggressions of the other. It is to be regretted these opposing forces have in late years gone so far in their efforts for supremacy that they now operate upon the principle that their interests are antagonistic. It is when these contests become so heated that violations of the law, the peace of the community, and the destruction of life and property are threatened, that the courts are compelled to intervene."

The injunction was therefore continued pending the final disposition of the case.

Murdock, Kerr & Company v. Walker et al. (October 27, 1892), 152 Penn, 595.

The plaintiffs were job printers, and their journeymen and pressmen, being members of typographic and pressmen's unions, left their employment because their wages were not increased. The plaintiffs' bill alleged that the journeymen and pressmen who had thus left their employment had combined to prevent persons not members of said unions entering into the plaintiff's employment, and had attempted to accomplish this purpose by

"threats, menaces, intimidation, and opprobrious epithets addressed to the plaintiffs' workmen, by gathering in crowds about plaintiffs' place of business and places where plaintiffs' workmen boarded, following the workmen to and from their work and holding them up to ridicule and contempt of bystanders," etc.,

and also alleged that by this conduct the plaintiffs had been deprived of the services of the men who were willing to work for them, and impeded and damaged in their business, and that the defendants would continue their unlawful conduct if not enjoined. The court found as a fact that

"A number of the defendants, with others, have been in the habit of collecting in crowds about the establishment of the plaintiffs, having followed their workmen to and from their boarding-houses and possibly interfered with them in passing along the public streets, in some instances even resorting to actual force, and that the whole course of those actively en gaged in this movement was a menace to the workmen of the plaintiffs as well as to the public peace,"

and an injunction was ordered, restraining the defendants by name

"from gathering at and about plaintiffs' place of business, and from following the workmen employed by the plaintiffs, or who may hereafter be so employed, to and from their work, and gathering at and about the boarding places of said workmen, and from any and all manner of menaces, intimidation, opprobrious epithets, ridicule and annoyance to and against said workmen, and any of them, for and on account of their working for the plaintiffs."

On appeal this injunction order was affirmed by the Supreme Court, January 3, 1893.

Blindell et al. v. Hagan et al. (Circuit Court, E. D., Louisiana, February 9, 1893), 54 Fed. Rep. 40.

Here, upon a bill by ship-owners alleging that they were the owners of a steamship in use in the carrying trade between New Orleans and Liverpool, and that they were

"prevented from shipping a crew by the unlawful and well-nigh violent combination of the defendants; that this combination was so numerous as to make it impossible for the complainants to obtain a crew without a restraining order of the court; that this unlawful interference of the defendants was interrupting the business of the complainants in the carrying trade, and doing them an irreparable injury,"

Billings, D. J., issued an injunction restraining the defendants from interfering with and preventing the shipowners from shipping a crew. The precise terms of the injunction do not appear in the report, but the character of the acts enjoined appears from the statement of the court that the evidence failed "to connect the defendant Dunn with the unfriendly acts of the other defendants," and, therefore, injunction should not issue against him.

In this case it was first claimed that such an injunction could issue under the Act of 1890 (26 U. S. Statutes at large, p. 209). But the court held that suits in equity, or injunction suits by any other than the Government of the United States, are not authorized by that act.

Toledo, Ann Arbor, etc., Railway Company v. Pennsylvania Company, et al. (Circuit Court, W. D. Ohio, March 25, 1893), 54 Fed. Rep. 746.

Here, the Toledo & Ann Arbor Railway brought a bill against the Pennsylvania Company and other companies, owning connecting railroads to compel them to receive from it and deliver to it interstate freight. A mandatory injunction was issued and served upon the defendant companies, and brought to the notice of the employés of the companies by publication.

Afterwards the plaintiff applied for an order attaching certain employés, engineers and firemen, for contempt in violating the injunction. When they were brought into court, Ricks, D. J., who had issued the injunction admonished them as to their duties, saying:

"The order of the court was made, in this case, after due
consideration,1 with full knowledge of its scope and possible
consequences, and with the purpose to enforce it in its letter
and spirit without unnecessary hardship, but with such prompt-
ness and vigor as might become necessary to give full protec-
tion to all concerned.
I desire now to suggest to you

that you should not overlook the nature and importance of
your employment. You are engaged in a service of a public
character, and the public are interested not only in the way
in which you perform your duties while you continue in that
service, but are quite as much interested in the time and cir-
cumstances under which you quit that employment. You can-
not always choose your own time and place for terminating
these relations. If you were permitted to do so, you might
quit your work at a time and place and under circumstances
which would involve irreparable damage to your employers,
and jeopardize the lives of the traveling public. Your employers
owe a high duty to the public, which they are compelled to
perform under severe penalties for every neglect, and they
have in turn a higher claim upon you and your service than
that due from the ordinary employé. This court does not
assume the power to compel you to continue your service to
your employers against your will, but it does undertake to
compel you to perform your whole duty while such relations
continue; and does further claim, for the purpose of ascertain-
ing whether its orders have been violated, the right to deter-
mine when your relations to your employer legally termi-
nated."

Thereafter the hearing on the motion for attachment for contempt was continued, and on April 3d, the court announced its opinion. To the. suggestion that the orders issued by him were without precedent, Judge Ricks said:

66

Every just order or rule known to equity courts was born of some emergency to meet some new conditions, and was, therefore, in its time, without a precedent."

He then proceeded to discuss the case and to distinguish

1 It was, in fact, made ex parte on the day the bill was filed.

between the duties of railway employés to their employers and the duties of employés to their employers in other employments, saying, that the defendants must have known that the railroad company was bound to receive and haul all interstate freight under severe penalties, and that:

"Holding to that employer, so engaged in this great public
undertaking, the relation they did, they owed to him and to
the public a higher duty than if their service had been due to
a private person.
In ordinary conditions as between
employer and employé, the privilege of the latter to quit the
former's service at his option cannot be prevented by restraint
or force.
But these relative rights and powers may
become quite different in the case of the employés of a great
public corporation, charged by the law with certain great
trusts and duties to the public. An engineer and fireman,
who start from Toledo with a train of cars filled with passen-
gers destined for Cleveland, begin that journey under contract
to drive their engine and draw the cars to the destination
agreed on. Will it be claimed that this engineer and fireman
could quit their employment when the train is part way on its
route, and abandon it at some point where the lives of the
passengers would be imperilled, and the safety of the public
jeopardized?
The very nature of their service, in-
volving as it does the custody of human life, and the safety of
millions of property, imposes on them obligations and duties
commensurate with the character of the trusts committed to
them. They represent a class of skilled laborers, limited in
number, whose places cannot always be supplied. The
engineers on the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad
operate steam engines moving over its different divisions 2,500
cars of freight per day. They transport the products of fac-
tories, whose output must be speedily carried away to keep
their employés in labor. The suspension of work on the line
of such a vast railroad by the arbitrary action of the body of
its engineers and firemen would paralyze the business of the
entire country, entailing losses and bringing disaster to thou-
sands of unoffending citizens. Contracts would be broken,
perishable property destroyed, the traveling public embarrassed,