A Federal Judge Orders the Northern Pacific's Workers Not to Strike
With wages about to be cut, railroad receivers win an injunction forbidding engineers, firemen, trainmen and switchmen from combining or quitting—setting up a collision between the courts and organized labor.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The action of the receivers of the Northern Pacific Railroad in obtaining injunctions from Judge Jenkins, of the United States district court of Wisconsin, to prevent the employees and their unions from striking against the reduction of wages to take effect January 1, was followed last night by similar action for the district of Washington. The application had been made on the previous day by A. F. Burleigh and W. G. Chapman, the attorneys for the receivers in this city and Tacoma respectively, but Judge Hanford was not willing to grant the order on an ex parte statement of facts. The attorneys appeared before him again yesterday and urged the action of the court in Wisconsin as a reason, and made such a showing of the danger of a strike and of the injury it would do that Judge Hanford hesitated no longer and granted the application.
The order is far-reaching, covering every contingency likely to result from the dispute, for it forbids the employees to strike or to do anything to hamper the operation of the road. It commands the officers, agents and employees of Thomas F. Oakes, Henry C. Payne and Henry C. Rouse, as receivers of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, and all engineers, firemen, trainmen, train dispatchers, telegraphers, conductors, switchmen and other employees, and all persons, associations and combinations, to desist and refrain from disabling engines, cars or other property; from interfering with men who desire to continue in the service or with men employed to take the place of those who quit; from obstructing the operation of the railroad or its telegraph lines; and from combining and conspiring to quit, with or without notice, for the purpose of crippling the property or embarrassing the operation of the road.
Dispatches from St. Paul and Tacoma reported that the employees were making an effort before Judge Jenkins to have the wage schedule continued, and that the new schedules made no provision for recognizing their committees. The company's officials said the new rules protected every honest, capable and faithful employee; the men replied that any officer of the road could still arbitrarily drive a disliked employee out of the company's employ. The latest order of the Northern Pacific was for a reduction in the wages of the men employed by the month in the company's large mines at Roslyn—5 per cent for those receiving between $50 and $75, and 10 per cent for those receiving more than that amount. The reduction was to go into effect with the others on January 1.
“You ... are hereby strictly charged and commanded ... from combining and conspiring to quit ... with the object and intent of crippling the property or embarrassing the operation of said railroad.”
In 1893, a federal court used an injunction to stop a railroad strike before it began—prefiguring a century of labor injunctions. The fight over whether workers can act collectively, and whether courts will treat a strike as a threat to property, still echoes in debates over union rights and essential industries.
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