The Northern Pacific Railroad Company cases were fully discussed in §§ 55 and 58 above. 19 The petition was brought by the receiver of a railroad, and the court granted an injunction against employees and others from intimidating or persuading other employees to strike, or from combining to strike themselves, in such a manner as to cripple the railroad. This injunction was afterward modified on appeal, so that the injunction against persuading others, and the injunction against so leaving employment themselves as to cripple the railroad, were omitted.

20

In Lake Erie and Western Railroad Co. v. Bailey, a railway not in the hands of a receiver filed its bill against defendant employees and members of unions to restrain them from obstructing and interfering with the movements of its trains, and the injunction was granted against all force and intimidation, reserving to the laborers only the right to quit work themselves, or to organize for the purpose of quitting work if they so chose.

In 1894 the case of Lennon, mentioned above, came before the Circuit Court of Appeals on his application for a habeas corpus. The court

permissible to newspapers, provided they do not actually counsel a boycott or illegal acts of intimidation, etc.

19 Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. v. Northern Pacific R. R. Co., 60 F. R., 803; Arthur v. Oakes, 63 F. R., 310.

20 61 F. R., 494.

found that habeas corpus does not perform the office of a writ of error or an appeal in respect to the proceedings complained of, and that nothing is open to the court considering it but the jurisdiction of the court below, whether it had proper jurisdiction of the subject-matter and of the person. They also held, specifically, that it is not necessary, in order that a person should be bound to obey an injunction restraining a party to a suit, his agents, etc., from doing any act, that such person should himself be a party to the suit, or should be served with a copy of the injunction order, but that it is sufficient, if being such agent, he has actual notice that the order is being made.21

The same thing has recently been held by the Supreme Court of the United States on appeal from the Debs case," decided in the Circuit Court in December, 1894, and this case is the leading recent authority for the old position, that though the same act constitute a contempt and a crime, the contempt may be tried and punished by a court of equity without regard to the criminal remedy; and it has often been held that although an act has been specially made a crime, or misdemeanor, or public nuisance, the fact that it is also an injury to private rights or prop

21 Ex parte Lennon, 64 F. R., 320.

22 U. S. v. Debs, 64 F. R., 724; 158 U. S., 564.

erty, or a private nuisance, will enable the person injured to bring a bill against the parties committing it, or threatening to commit it, for an injunction.

$65. Strikes against Receivers.-Under the established doctrine of courts of equity a receiver appointed to take charge of property or prevent waste is the officer of the court. It follows that any interference with his possession is an interference with the possession of the court, and hence a contempt; and it will be a contempt independent of any injunction or any express words of the order appointing the receiver; although it is very common, particularly in modern times, to couple with the order appointing a receiver an injunction against all persons (or at least against all parties to the suit, their agents and privies) from interfering with the property in suit or with the possession of the receiver.

This doctrine has become very important in recent years, owing to the great extension of receivership jurisdiction by courts of equity over insolvent corporations, particularly railroads; and as nearly all railroads are situated in more than one state (or at least present in cases of insolvency an opportunity for invoking the jurisdiction of the federal courts owing to the different citizenship of the parties), the greatest ex

tension of the control of railroads by courts of equity has occurred in the federal courts. In recent years more than one-third of the entire railroad mileage of the United States has been in the hands of receivers, nearly always appointed by the federal courts—that is, they have been run by receivers as officers of the courts— and any interference with their possession, or even with the traffic and management of the railway has rendered the guilty parties liable to the injunctions or contempt process of the court appointing the receiver. This, perhaps, has been the principal cause of what has become to be known as government by injunction; that is, the management of the railway interests of the country by officers of the federal courts under the control of equity process with its affirmative remedies before adverted to, which make it possible, by simple court order, to require all railroad employees, and even labor organizations affiliated with them, to perform the duties of their service in full under penalty of contempt.

Many such cases have been discussed in the last section and in § 55, Strikes, and §§ 57, 58, Boycotts; and it remains but to mention a few of the decisions on simple cases of strikes against receivers to show the nature and extent of the jurisdiction. Thus, in re Doolittle and another, strikers,1 the Wabash Railway being in

123 F. R., 544. See also § 55.

the hands of receivers, the United States Marshal reported to the court that at Hannibal, Mo., he found the possession and use of the property interfered with by bodies of men, who spiked and blocked the tracks, drew water from the engines, and incited the agents and employees of the receivers to quit work; and that, in particular, Doolittle had prevented a train-master from taking out of a round-house a number of engines in the custody of the receivers, whereupon he had caused him to be arrested, and also arrested one Schanbacher for holding an engine upon and for the purpose of blocking the main track. As a result the movement of the engine and about one hundred freight-cars was delayed some hours, and the two prisoners were attached for contempt. It appeared that the strikers were engaged in a strike not against the Wabash, but against the Union Pacific Railroad, and Justice Brewer (now of the Supreme Court) ruled that although the defendants did not set out to obstruct the receivers of the Wabash Railroad, yet they did set out to obstruct some persons in the exercise of their legal rights, and interfered with other persons working, and prevented the owners of railroad trains from moving them; and the defendants were accordingly sentenced to sixty days' imprisonment.

In the same year (1885) four persons were attached for interfering with the receivers in pos