The opinion which Judge Taft wrote in this case is a long one. He quotes the provisions of the Interstate Commerce Act, which clearly made it a criminal offense for the officers, agents, or employees of any of these connecting roads wilfully to refuse to receive and transmit the freight of the Toledo Road, and declares that the attempt of the Locomotive Engineers to compel the railroads to commit this criminal offense through this Rule 12 was unlawful. As to the rule itself, he says, after an exhaustive examination of it in connection with the provisions of the Interstate Commerce Law:
We have thus considered with some care the criminal character of Rule 12 and its enforcement, not only, as will presently be seen, because it assists in determining the civil liabilities which grow out of them, but also because we wish to make it plain, if we can, to the intelligent and generally law-abiding men who compose the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, as well as to their usually conservative chief officer, what we cannot believe they appreciate, that notwithstanding their perfect organization and their charitable, temperance and other elevated and useful purposes, the existence of Rule 12 under their organic law makes the Brotherhood a criminal conspiracy against the laws of their country.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers acquiesced in the criticism of this section of their laws and removed it. The fact that this organization is in existence to-day, unimpaired in power and authority throughout the American railroad world, is an indication of its willingness to recognize and obey the law of the land. Its conduct in subsequently withdrawing the rule shows that Judge Taft was justified in setting forth with such painstaking clearness the illegality of the rule, with the expectation that its illegality would be recognized and the rule abolished--a confidence which was justified by its results.
The next labor decision made by Judge Taft was in the well-known Phelan case in the great Pullman strike of 1894. The organization with which he was then called upon to deal was of a totally different character from that of the Locomotive Engineers. It was one managed in entire disregard of the law, the courts, and the public. Eugene V. Debs, the chief agent of that organization, the American Railway Union, is to-day the Socialist candidate for the presidency. In the Pullman strike of 1894 Judge Taft sent one of Debs' chief assistants--Phelan--to jail for six months. If his judicial conduct in this matter merits criticism, here are the facts on which that criticism must be based: