Challenge of the Gilded Age: The Myth of Laissez-Faire Economics in American History, Part II

The injunction also became a powerful tool for American courts in their involvement in labor disputes. More and more states passed anti-labor legislation which often barred picketing and made strikes illegal, as well as authorized companies to employ and utilize their own police to use against strikers. And the courts, state and federal, upheld many of these laws as necessary for the protection of property. When these laws were not followed and workers chose to strike, demonstrate, organize, or boycott, companies would then visit the courts to seek injunctions to such illegal activity. The Pullman Boycott in 1893 brought to the fore this powerful anti-labor tool. The federal court presiding in the region ordered the members of the American Railway Union, in its attempt to bring the Pullman company to its knees through a national boycott of its railcars, to stop

interfering with the mails, the interstate commerce, or with the conduct of the business of the 23 railroads specifically named. Even attempts to persuade railroad employees to quit work were prohibited.... Under this injunction any form of picketing became a crime. This Chicago injunction was copied in other cities; one injunction, in fact, issued by Judge Phillips in the U.S. Circuit Court at Kansas City, Missouri, not only enjoined persuasion, but admonished the workers on the Santa Fe Railroad not to leave the service of the company.

Under the injunction, furthermore, there was not trial by jury. The judge became supreme arbiter, for he not only issued the injunction, but also punished violators for contempt of court. In this way a kind of military law was established.... Thus the court injunction proved itself a potent strike-breaking instrument, with the result that it has been employed ever since in strikes.¹¹

Later, in the trial of Eugene Debs, the leader of the strike, the Supreme Court would affirm the utility of the court injunction in regulating commerce. Protection of the welfare of the workers, however, would not be federally granted.

As America moved into a new century, the American public was becoming more aware of the growing problems in industry. Muckrakers such as Ida Tarbell, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and Helen Keller would help create a climate in which the federal government, because of growing public concern, would be compelled to act on behalf of the American worker. The early 1900s, positively dubbed the Progressive Era, would send government intervention in the economy

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