Fighting for the People in and out of Court
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neys, Stephen S. Gregory and William W. Erwin, took the lead. The civilcase, which began on July 17, was the longer and had the clearest resolution.It began in Chicago and ended before the U.S. Supreme Court in Washing-ton, D.C. The prosecution, led by railroad lawyer Edwin Walker and U.S.district attorney Thomas Milchrist, contended that Debs and his colleagueshad intentionally violated the injunction. Walker and Milchrist had obtainedscores of telegrams ostensibly signed by E. V. Debs and sent to unions aroundthe country, telling them to stand by the Pullman boycott. Two of them, thegovernment lawyers asserted, promoted violence. To strikers in Butte, Mon-tana, Debs allegedly wrote: “The general managers are weakening. If thestrike is not settled in forty-eight hours, complete paralysis will follow. Po-tatoes and ice are out of sight. Save your money and buy a gun.”
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In another,he was charged with cryptically stating: “Say nothing, but saw wood”; thelatter, in “Middle State parlance,” meant “arm yourself.”
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In the rest, Debspleaded with workers to “resist the plutocracy and arrogant monopoly.”
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Debs’s lawyers objected strenuously to the introduction of the telegramswhile Edwin M. Mulford, manager of the Western Union Company, resistedturning over the telegrams to the prosecution. Echoing a later and larger twenty-first-century debate, Mulford believed that it was improper for theprivate company to provide the government with private communiqués with-out a court order.When the civil trial resumed in September 1894 after a two-month hia-tus, the prosecution had secured its court order, and for two days WesternUnion’s Mulford painstakingly read the stack of telegrams into evidence.Prosecutors argued they demonstrated that all the thousands of strikers werefollowing Debs’s orders, and thus, he and the ARU had violated the courtinjunction. Although Darrow was present, Gregory led the counterattack,maintaining that while he was “not an apologist for riot and arson,” workershad an inalienable right to strike and to quit. Judge William A. Woods con-ceded the point. “Well, then”—Gregory smiled and continued—“I holdthat if a man has the right to strike, he has a right also to advise others tostrike.” Judge Woods agreed: “I do not even deny the right of laborers toconspire to strike, if it is for a legal purpose.” Surprised at the friendly re-ception from the bench, Gregory got to the heart of his defense: “If this in- junction was issued without jurisdiction by the court, my clients had a rightto violate it.” Woods interrupted: “I will admit to that also.” Gregory then
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