In Re Debs

IN RE DEBS,

IN RE DEBS, 158 U.S. 564 (1895). Influenced by his attorney general, Richard Olney, and convinced that the Pullman strike of June–July 1894 was interfering with interstate commerce and the delivery of mails, President Grover Cleveland ordered troops into Chicago. Although

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the Sherman Antitrust Act had proved of little value in controlling monopoly and Olney himself considered it useless, he asked and secured from the U.S. court in Chicago an injunction based on this act and on the law prohibiting obstruction of the mails. Described as the "omnibus injunction" because of its wide sweep, it forbade Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union, and other officers "from in any way or manner interfering with, hindering, obstructing or stopping" the business of the railroads entering Chicago. Arrested for alleged violation of the injunction on 10 July, Debs and other leaders were found guilty, 14 December, of contempt and sentenced to jail, the sentences varying from three to six months (United States v. Debs, 64 Federal Reporter 724). Carried to the Supreme Court on a writ of habeas corpus, the sentence was upheld, on 27 May 1895, on the government's constitutional authority over inter-state commerce and the mails. While the circuit court had based the injunction specifically on the Sherman Act, Justice David J. Brewer of the Supreme Court rested its decision on "broader grounds." Injunctions had traditionally been used to protect individuals in civil or criminal matters; with the Debs injunction, the Court dramatically expanded its reach into the preservation of national sovereignty and social order.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cooper, Jerry M. The Army and Civil Disorder: Federal Military Intervention in Labor Disputes, 1877–1900. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980.

Eggert, Gerald C. Railroad Labor Disputes. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967.

———. Steelmasters and Labor Reform, 1886–1923. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981.

H. U. Faulkner

Eric J. Marser

See also Habeas Corpus, Writ of ; Injunctions, Labor ; Pullman Strike ; Railroads ; Strikes .