sympathetic strike spread to other branches of the service, causing the partial or complete paralysis of a number of railroads. Although its ramifications were wide throughout the West, it is best studied in Chicago, the most important railroad centre of the country.

The first interference of the national government came from the necessity of moving the United States mails, which were generally carried by the fast trains to which Pullman cars were attached. The President had an able Attorney-General in Richard Olney, who interpreted soundly the laws that applied to the situation, himself acted in strict accordance with them and advised the President that he would in no way overstep the limits set by the Constitution and the statutes in the course that he proposed to follow. Much of the action was based on a section of the anti-trust law of 1890. Olney used the United States District Attorney, a special counsel and the marshal to furnish him accurate information and to carry out his orders. He empowered the marshal to appoint a large number of deputies and directed the attorneys to apply to the courts for injunctions. July 2 a sweeping injunction was granted against Debs,' president of the American Railway Union, and others, restraining them from obstructing the United States mails. It is reported that Cleveland declared that "if it took every dollar in the Treasury and every soldier in the United States army to deliver a postal card in Chicago, that postal card should be delivered." In fact the strike had become a riot. The city police and deputy marshals were unable to preserve order, and the President, who

1 Agnes Repplier, Atlantic Monthly, August 1917.

On

had been carefully preparing for the emergency, ordered about 2000 United States troops to Chicago. These arrived on July 4, but failed at first to quell the trouble. The outcasts in Chicago swelled the mob who openly defied the injunction of the United States court, demolished and burned cars and railway buildings and obstructed traffic on all of the twenty-three railroads centring in Chicago. The troops were active in dispersing various mobs and where they appeared a semblance of order was restored, but the President and law-abiding citizens were hampered by the attitude of the Governor of Illinois, Altgeld, who was called "the friend and champion of disorder." Anarchy was threatened and the police of Chicago under the mayor, and the militia under the Governor, seemed powerless to avert it. Had the Governor been like the State executives at the head of their States in 1877, he would have called upon the President for troops who would be sent under the constitutional provision; but not only did he decline to make any such requisition, but he even protested against the sending of United States troops to Chicago, and when they came demanded their withdrawal. The President answered him with dignity, stoutly and correctly maintaining that the "Federal troops were sent in strict accordance with the Constitution and laws of the United States."

The situation became so serious that on July 8 the President issued a solemn proclamation of warning and as ample reënforcements of regulars were at hand, the riot was checked. On July 10 Debs was arrested upon

1 The Nation, July 12.

an indictment for complicity in the obstruction of mails; three days later the strike was practically broken. One week after his arrest, while he was out on bail, Debs was brought before the court to show why he should not be punished for contempt and, as he saw that the game was up, declined to give bail and allowed himself to be imprisoned as a martyr. On July 20, the United States troops were withdrawn from Chicago.

The action of Cleveland in repressing this alarming disturbance is on a par with the best work of this kind accomplished by our Presidents. In the precedent that it established, it amounts to something more. Olney furnished Cleveland with a powerful weapon in the new use of the injunction and expounded the law under which he was empowered to act after the Governor of Illinois had failed in his duty. When at the height of the trouble a resolution was introduced by a Populist Senator declaring that no Federal process should issue for alleged obstruction of trains unless the interference was with that part of the train essential to carrying the mails, the President of the Duluth branch of the American Railway Union asked Cushman K. Davis, a Republican Senator from Minnesota, to vote for this resolution. Davis replied: "You are rapidly approaching the overt act of levying war against the United States and you will find the definition of that act in the Constitution. You might as well ask me to vote to dissolve the Government." 1

The President's action was deemed so well-advised and opportune that he received approval from all sides. On

1 The Nation, July 12.

July 11 the Senate and on July 16 the House passed resolutions by a very large majority endorsing his action. The Catholic Church, true to her conservative record in our country, was correctly represented by Archbishop Ireland when he said: "I approve President Cleveland's course in the strike. His prompt action brought State and city officials, citizens and strikers to their senses."

Cooley, a distinguished jurist, expressed his unqualified satisfaction with Cleveland's "vindication of the national authority and the restoration of law and order." You proceeded, he wrote, with "caution and deliberation" and gave with "remarkably little bloodshed" a great and valuable lesson in constitutional construction." Best of all, the United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion delivered by Justice Brewer, declared that the President had acted correctly and within his legal competency. Later Taft, while President, spoke of the great debt which the country owes to Cleveland for the assertion "through him, as its chief executive, of the power of the Federal government directly to defend the Federal jurisdiction through the process of Federal courts and by Federal troops against the lawless invasion of a mob." To Cleveland and to Olney we, in this country of reverence for just decisions, owe a precedent of incalculable value.1

1 Authorities: Presidential Problems, Cleveland; Richardson, ix.; The Nation, July 1894, passim; Public Opinion, July 12, 19, 26; U. S. vs. Alger, 62 Fed. Rep. 824; In re Debs, 158 U. S. 564; see Judge Taft in Thomas vs. Ry. Co., 62 Fed. Rep. 803. The President sent troops to Chicago under authority of Sections 5298, 5299 Revised Statutes; 5298 was enacted in 1861, 5299 in 1871. See also Dewey; Peck.

During 1894 Coxey's "Army of the Commonweal of Christ" attracted attention. Coxey at its head marched on Washington with the demand that Congress should issue 500 millions of paper money to give to the un

It is clear that had it not been for the repeal of the purchase clause of the Act of 1890, the country would of necessity have adopted the standard of silver monometallism, and yet this action of Congress only brought about by the resolute and persistent work of the President did not wholly avert the danger. On January 17, 1894, as a result of the financial panic, and the deficit occasioned by the expenses of the government being greater than the revenue, the gold reserve was less than seventy millions. If the government ceased to pay gold on demand for greenbacks and for the Treasury notes issued under the Act of 1890, the two together amounting to nearly five hundred millions, it was in the condition of a bank refusing to redeem its bills or of an individual unable to meet his obligations; in other words, it was bankrupt.

Cleveland was keenly alive to the situation and, in order to replenish the gold reserve, sold bonds authorized by the resumption act of 1875. At two different times, January 17, 1894 and November 13, 1894 his Secretary of the Treasury asked for bids in gold for fifty millions five per cent. ten year bonds and, with the aid of New York banks and other moneyed institutions, sold them at a rate that gave the government its gold on a basis

employed work in improving the highways. "The newspapers made much of Coxey's army," wrote Peck. It "straggled into Washington on April 28. . . reduced to about three hundred men. The mild spring weather had led most of the 'army' to roam off as individuals into the pleasant country valleys, where they could bask in the sunshine and live by begging. On the first of May however Coxey marched his dwindling host into the grounds of the Capitol, bearing aloft some improvised banners of calico and paper muslin." He and some of his followers were arrested by the Capitol Police for walking on the grass. "Such was the farcical end of the Coxey crusade." It "terminated in a short jail sentence served for the violation of a local ordinance" by Coxey. Peck, 373 et seq.