Opinion of the Court.

tion, together with the restraining order, should have quickened his conscience and his perceptions of his duty in this regard. It was his duty, therefore, to cease all his operations with reference to the strike in this city which could in in any way affect the operation of the Southern Railway, whether by inciting employés to leave the receiver or by preventing [823] his employment of others. What did he do? Instead of ceasing to incite the receiver's employés to leave his employ in pursuance of his unlawful conspiracy, there has been no change whatever in his course from that pursued by him before his arrest. By speeches every night since the arrest he has aggravated his contempt. On the night of July 4th, it is in evidence, the contemnor said, in a speech to railroad employés of the city, referring to this trial:

"I don't care if I am violating injunctions. No matter what the result may be to-morrow, if I go to jail for sixteen generations, I want you to do as you have done. Stand pat to a man. No man go back unless all go, and all stay out unless Phelan says go back."

It was a direct invitation to continue the course already taken under his direction of preventing the return of employés to the receiver, and of persuading the striking of others, and an avowed intention of disregarding the order of the court.

The punishment for a contempt is the most disagreeable duty a court has to perform, but it is one from which the court cannot shrink. If orders of the court are not obeyed, the next step is unto anarchy. It is absolutely essential to the administration of justice that courts should have the power to punish contempts, and that they should use it when the enforcement of their orders is flagrantly defied. But it is only to secure present and future compliance with its orders that the power is given, and not to impose punishment commensurate with crimes or misdemeanors committed in the course of the contempt, which are cognizable in a different tribunal or in this court by indictment and trial by jury. I have no right, and do not wish, to punish the contemner for the havoc which he and his associates have wrought to the business of this country, and the injuries they have done to labor and capital alike, or for the privations and sufferings to

Syllabus.

which they have subjected innocent people, even if they may not be amenable to the criminal laws therefor. I can only inflict a penalty which may have some effect to secure future compliance with the orders of this court and to prevent willful and unlawful obstructions thereof.

After much consideration, I do not think I should be doing my duty as a judicial officer of the United States without imposing upon the contemner the penalty of imprisonment. The sentence of the court is that Frank W. Phelan be confined in the county jail of Warren county, Ohio, for a term of six months. The marshal will take the prisoner into custody, and safely convey him to the place of imprisonment.

[824]

UNITED STATES v. AGLER.

(Circuit Court, D. Indiana. July 12, 1894.)

[62 Fed., 824.]

INJUNCTION AGAINST COMBINATIONS IN RESTRAINT OF INTERSTATE COMMERCE-JURISDICTION.-Under Act July 2, 1890, declaring illegal and punishing combinations in restraint of commerce among the states, and conferring jurisdiction on United States circuit courts to prevent and restrain violations of the act, the court has jurisdiction to issue an injunction to restrain such violation."

SAME-TECHNICAL DEFECTS IN BILL.-That a bill for such injunction contains no prayer for process, this being a mere technical defect, although it renders the bill demurrable, does not affect the jurisdiction of the court or render the injunction issued thereon void. SAME

DEFENDANTS NOT NAMED IN BILL, NOR SERVED WITH SUBPOENA.An injunction for such purpose becomes binding, as against one not named in the bill, and not served with subpoena, when the injunction order is served on him as one of the unknown defendants referred to in the bill. SAME-PROCEEDINGS TO PUNISH VIOLATION.-An information to punish violation of such an injunction order which fails to allege that the order was a lawful one, in the language of the statute, or that the person charged, not named in the order, was one of the unknown parties referred to therein, or that, either by his words or his acts, he was engaged in aiding the common object with other members of the alleged combination, lacks the necessary certainty.

Syllabus copyrighted, 1894, by West Publishing Co.

Opinion of the Court.

This was an information against Hiram Agler for contempt of court in disobeying an injunction. Defendant moved to quash the information.

F. B. Burke and Edwin Corr, for the United States.

McCullough & Spaan, for defendant.

BAKER, District Judge (orally).

It is well settled that a restraining order or injunction issued by a judicial tribunal without jurisdiction of the subject-matter is coram non judice and void. That is affirmed in all the books, and affirmed in the judgments of the supreme court of the United States that the counsel for the defendant has called the attention of the court to. Now, the question whether or not the circuit court of the United States had jurisdiction requires an examination of the statute, for the purpose of determining whether or not there is any law that authorized the court judicially to take cognizance of the sort of action that is set forth in the petition or bill.

Prior to the 2d day of July, 1890, it is entirely clear that the United States, as a municipal corporation, had no power, either by petition or bill, to go into the courts of equity of the United States, and invoke the aid of those courts, by their restraining power, to prevent interference with the carriage of the mails or with the carriage of interstate commerce. Prior to that time the sole remedy was on the criminal side of the court. The sole method in which the United States, as a government, could prosecute violators of the law who interfered with the carriage of mails or inter- [825] fered with the instrumentalities used in the conduct of interstate commerce, was by indictment or information on the criminal side of the court; but the growth of railways in this country, and the combinations of laborers employed on those roads for the purpose of enforcing, by strikes or otherwise, what they conceived to be their just rights, had led to a condition of things that, in the judgment of congress, made it imperative that the courts of the United States,-in other words, that the nation itself,-for the purpose of protecting the mails of the country, and for the purpose of protecting the passenger and freight traffic on interstate railroads, should

Opinion of the Court.

have the right to invoke not only the criminal juris diction of the court by fines, or by sending to the penitentiary those who were guilty of violations of those laws, but that the government should also be clothed with the power-or rather the courts of the United States should be clothed with the power of laying their strong hands on these men, and not waiting until crimes had been committed, but restraining, not for the purpose of preventing people from doing what is lawful, or to prevent their getting better wages, but for the purpose of saying to everybody that civil liberty cannot exist where combinations of men undertake by force and violence to arrest the peaceable and orderly conduct of business among the states. With that view of national duty, on July 2, 1890, congress enacted a law that enlarged the jurisdiction of the federal courts, and authorized them to apply the restraining power of the law for the purpose of checking and arresting all lawless interference with the peaceable and orderly carriage of mails, and with the peaceable and orderly conduct of railroad business between the states. This law was intended to lay its strong hand, not only upon the capitalists or monopolists who, by combinations, undertook to interfere with the business and commerce of the country, and subject them to punishment, but, on the other hand, it also undertook to say to the laboring men of the country that "you shall not enforce your rights, however just they may be, by violence and by lawlessness."

Civil order cannot exist where men undertake by strong hand to enforce rights, whatever their rights may be. In civilized and organized society there is only one avenue that is alike open to the rich and the poor-that is, the avenue of the courts for the purpose of settling disputes between men. No man has a right, even though he has been wronged, even though he may have been oppressed, to take the law into his own hands, and, by force and terrorism or threats, redress his wrongs. It means a condition of things that would be absolutely intolerable in civilized society, and it was in order that the peaceable and quiet and orderly processes of the law might be applied to men who are thus engaged, whether they were monopolists, on the one side, or laboring men, on the other, that the law was enacted for the purpose of ar

Opinion of the Court.

resting lawlessness, composing these disturbances, and bringing about that orderly and peaceful condition of affairs that is essential to the life and happiness of the community.

[826] Now, there is no doubt, in my judgment, that this act of July 2, 1890, did clothe the circuit court of the United States with this new and enlarged power. That, however, does not answer the entire contention of the counsel for the defense. He insists that the affidavit and information filed in this case does not reach and bind the defendant as charged, because, as he alleges, the bill does not contain a prayer for process; and he reads from an authority which is undoubtedly sound that a bill in equity without containing a prayer for process which shall embody the names of the defendants against whom process is prayed would be demurrable. That is undoubtedly the law. That, however, does not settle the question that is before the court. The question is whether or not if an injunction is issued by a court which has power to issue the injunction upon a bill, provided the bill is not demurrable, is the injunction void because, on investigation, the court believes that a demurrer might have been sustained to the bill if it had been interposed? In other words, does a mere defect that could be reached by demurrer, in a bill of which the court has jurisdiction, over which the court has been given jurisdiction by the express terms of the statute, is the injunction order a nullity, and can it be treated with contempt because the bill is defective, so that a demurrer might be sustained to it? On that proposition the court entertains no doubt. There is not an authority, in the judgment of the court, that can be found in the books-certainly the court is aware of none-in which it has ever been held that a man who was enjoined and had violated the injunction could escape punishment by alleging that, at the time the writ of injunction was issued, the bill was demurrable.

There is no doubt but what a number of men are named expressly by name. Eugene V. Debs, Howard, and some men here in this state are named by name. If, in the prayer for process, their names had been repeated, or if it had been simply stated in the prayer for process that the com