People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1894 — CAN’T LEAVE THEIR TRAINS. [ARTICLE]

CAN’T LEAVE THEIR TRAINS.

Striking Engineers of a Mail Train Guilty of Retarding the Mali. St. Paul, Minn., Aug. I.—An engineer who abandons a mail train is guilty of a violation of the United States statute relating to retarding of the mails. Judge .Williams announced the fact Tuesday in ruling upon the indictment against Engineer William Best and Fireman Albert Kellett. He directed an acquittal of the men on the charge of conspiracy to do an unlawful act because of the failure of proof, but he chiefly stated that he thought them guilty of the charge of retarding the mail in deserting their train on a main line. The principal thing the strikers were anxious to have established in the case was that a man could legally abandon his tr.?in, but the judge decided the other way. This rulling was also ciesired by the railroad company much more than a conviction of the men on trial. The decision comes in a direct ruling on a p >i»t discussed and not as an obiter dictum.