Wealth Against Commonwealth by Henry Demarest Lloyd

Author:Henry Demarest Lloyd [Lloyd, Henry Demarest]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781411460096
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Published: 2017-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

The action of the judge in this and another celebrated case was made an issue in the elections in New York in 1889. In June 1882, the railroads in New York City, rather than pay the freight-handlers the 20 cents an hour they asked for, instead of 17 cents, brought the business of the city to a stop. They refused to employ their old men at that price, and did not supply their places. Trucks by thousands, heavy with merchandise, stood before the railroad freight-houses for days, waiting in vain to be unloaded. The trade of the metropolis was paralyzed, and the railroad officials sat serenely in their offices, letting the jam pile up until the freight-handlers were starved into accepting the wages they were offered, and commercial distress had made the business community desperate enough to tolerate that injustice, or any other iniquity, provided the "Goddess of Getting-on" were allowed to get on again. It was so clear that the price asked by the men was fair, and that the refusal of the railroads to set them at work and keep the channels of trade open was due to a purpose to manufacture such widespread loss and trouble that the public should be goaded into forgetfulness of the rights of the men, that public opinion forced the Attorney-General of the State to act. Re-enforced by able counsel, he applied for a peremptory writ of mandamus to compel the roads to resume operations. This motion came before this Buffalo judge, then sitting by assignment in New York. He kept the people waiting ten days, and then quashed and dismissed the petition. The decision of the Supreme Court, composed of judges of both parties, reversing his action, was unanimous, but the mischief he had done was by that time—January 17, 1883—long past mending.

When he was nominated to be judge again, after his indecision and decision had swelled the dividends of the great railways of New York, the presiding officer of the convention which was to choose him to be their candidate was, by a coincidence, also the president of one of the great railway corporations which had been involved in the judicial proceeding of 1882. The judge's record was made one of the issues in the State election which followed the defeat of justice in Buffalo. He was nominated by the Republicans in 1889 for Judge of the Court of Appeals, the highest court in the State of New York, and the nomination was asserted by the New York Times, in a leading editorial, to have been procured by the oil trust. Its "influence was active," said the Times, "in securing the nomination of" this judge. ". . . An attorney who has labored in its interests at Albany during the last two sessions of the Legislature was conspicuous among the men who did the work." The New York Times, the Buffalo Courier, the New York Star, the New York World, and other leading journals of the State retold the story

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