People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 January 1895 — DECISIONS ARE LAW. [ARTICLE]

DECISIONS ARE LAW.

BUT HUGIfTY fOOR LAW AND WORSE JUSTICE. WbOM Fault Wat Tt That' at' the Same Time the A. R. V; Went Oat on a Strike Some Other Follow* Bad a Grievance of Their Own to Settle? In speaking of the sentence of Debs, Attorney Harrow said: * *‘The dicislon is bad law, but the' sentence is remarkably lenient.” Unjust, but lenient. A remarkable combination of right and wrong. Bobbing a man of his liberty, then consoling him with ..the thought that he might have been treated much worse. • After a*l, it is “remarkable leniency’’ on the part of a plutocratic judge, when he had a chance at such a power-* erful leader of labor as Debs, not'to have sentenced him to prison for life. Might just as well have sentenced him twenty years as aix months for nothing. This thing of decisions of judge* taking the place of law is worse than “bad law.” Bad law is bad enough, but bad decisions without any law at all to support them are worse than anarchy. These things breed revolution. Since the Judge reasoned back to Debs as the cause es the riots, why not reason a little further back to Grover Cleveland and George M. Pullman. They were causes prior to Debs, and and should have suffered the penalty. Or perhaps the thirty years republican rule is responsible, since it built up Pullman and the railway corporations and forced the laborers to either work at starvation wages, or be shot down for a “change.” Either the republican party or the change ought to be sentenced to prison. Or perhaps the judge who issued the injunction, interfering with the legal rights of Mr. Debs ought to be imprisoned. Or perhaps the Railway Managers association that decided to support Pullman before the railway strike was ordered, was the original cause of the trouble. And perhaps the booby soldiers who blew up a cannon while trundling it about the streets, killing innocent women and children, were the cause of some rioting. Or perhaps the fool people of the United States who submit to such outrages all ought to be imprisoned. Or perhaps the producers of the country are guilty of overproduction, forcing the capitalists to increase their facilties for gobbling to such an extent that they produce riots. Or perhaps it was Columbus who discovered America thus opened the field for the creation of this free American spirit that opposes plutocracy. Or perhaps it was a mistake that the world was created at all, since the fact that it exists has made room for anarchists. Or perhaps the A. R. U. ought to have waited until the coming of the millenium before it struck, so that nobody else would have had a grievance to settle at the same time. £hey should have waited until all the other unemployed people of Chicago starved to death, so that they could not have taken advantage of the disturbance to wreak their vengeance upon the greedy corporations that rob them of a chance to ea n a living. “Contempt of court.” How can we have anything else but contempt for fucli a contemptiblo court?