date. Especially is this true with respect to employes of common carrier corporations subject to the interstate commerce law. They are fully identified with their employer in the discharge of its public functions."

cers.

The employes, therefore, in respect to public duties, are as much representatives of the corporation as its directors and offiIn fact, in a case like this, where the action or non-action of the employes determines conclusively the conduct of the corporation, they are more thoroughly its representatives than the officers and directors. The refusal of the engineers to handle complainant's freight was the refusal of the corporation, however anxious and willing the managing authorities may have been to keep their company in the path of the law. The writ, therefore, reaches and binds the employe, not as the agent or servant, but as a component part of the corporation. For the purposes of the writ, "the employe is the company."

To what will the further application and development of this doctrine lead?

Although the employe of the interstate carrier owes a duty to the public, yet the basis of that obligation is his contract relation with his employer. Upon whatever theory of law that duty is enforced by the mandatory injunction, the legal and practical effect to the employe is the enforcement of the specific performance of his contract of service. Now, a case may arise, similar in the form of procedure to the Ann Arbor cases, in w ich the employe shall have a legal and meritorious excuse for not doing the particular act required of him, and where, through the misstatement or non-statement of the facts in the bill, acquiesced in by the defendant, the employe is powerless to make his defense. The court, in such a case, will be compelled to find some way, other than the summary and quasi criminal process of contempt, to give the employe a chance to be heard upon the record. In that event, the matter will appear in its real light-an issue between master and servant involving the question of a specific performance of a contract for personal services. This step being taken, how long will it be before the court, rejecting all fictions, will sanction a direct suit between employer and employe for this purpose, and will enforce its decree for specific performance by the mandatory injunction? But this method of procedure

is based upon the idea of the continuous existence of the relation of master and servant, and could be rendered nugatory by a dissolution of that relation, as was done in the case of the three engineers who quit the company's service upon refusal to handle the obnoxious freight. Will the court ever go so far, in the way of specific performance, as to enjoin either party from terminating the contract of service?

Judge Ricks says, in regard to the conduct of the three engineers: "No special injury resulted from their refusal to continue in the company's service. No lives were imperiled and no property jeopardized by their act." He clearly intimates that if such had been the result, their abandonment of the serv ice would have been illegal, and that a court of equity might, "by restraining the employes from refraining to do acts which they have combined and conspired to do," grant the employer relief. "By such modes of procedure," he says, "courts of equity are often able to afford protection when they could not do it by attempting to enforce specific performance."

On the motion for an injunction against Arthur, Judge Taft ordered its issuance, on the ground that Arthur was directing and instigating the commission of acts in furtherance of an illegal and criminal conspiracy, to the irreparable injury of the complainant. He states the legal distinction between a boycot and a strike. A combination of employes to withhold their labor from the employer in order to redress their grievance, as against him, and to benefit themselves, is a strike, and is not illegal. Such was the condition of things on complainant's road. But if the employes on one of the defendant roads, having no grievance against their employer, and entirely satisfied with the terms of their employment, should combine to threaten the employer with abandonment of their services unless the employer should refuse to handle complainant's freight, this would be a boycot. Such a combination would be a conspiracy to procure and force their employer to violate the interstate commerce act, and therefore illegal and criminal. The judge uses these significant words: "It would seem from the foregoing authorities that we may enjoin Arthur from directing the engineers to quit work, for the purpose of coercing the defendant companies to violate the law and complainant's rights. Though we cannot

enjoin the engineers from unlawfully quitting, it does not follow that we may not enjoin Arthur from ordering them to do so. An injunction in this form, however, has not been asked, and we need not decide the question."

When such an injunction shall be asked and granted, if this be the law, then it must be admitted that courts of equity will have taken a long stride towards the ultimate position of enjoining the dissolution of the relation of master and servant in matters relating to the carrying of interstate freight.

STATE AND FEDERAL COURTS SHOULD ADMINISTER THE SAME LAW ON QUESTIONS AFFECTING PRIVATE RIGHTS.

M. SAVAGE.

All the people of any sovereign State or nation, whose fundamental principle of government is an equality before the law, should receive from the judiciary or law-dispensing power of their State or nation the same protection of life, liberty, and property under like circumstances. It should be meted out in the same way, and conditions or circumstances should not be allowed to intervene, which would, in any way, give to one individual rights, privileges, or immunities not given to all under similar conditions. The laws of every sovereign State or nation are formed and grow out of the customs, usages, and needs of the people. They are necessary rules adopted by society, and have for their object either the redress of wrongs or the protection of individuals in the enjoyment of rights, and should be administered with the same results to all persons. They bring about government; the ruler and ruled are brought into being by common consent and for mutual good, with the express understanding that all rights shall be protected and enforced, and all wrongs enjoined and punished, in an even, impartial, and single manner. In this way they become united and inseparable, and, taken together, constitute the law-making power and compose one people.

No set or class of people can live happily and contented in any government which fails to weigh all the rights of every individual alike. Of course, laws cannot be the same everywhere, not any more than society can be. In the language of Judge Turley, “A few plain and practical rules will do for a wandering horde of savages, but they must and will be more extensively

ramified when civilization has polished, and commerce and arts and agriculture enriched, a nation." But whether the laws of a land be "a few plain and practical rules," or a system of laws, a jurisprudence commanding the respect and admiration of the world, the people whose lot has been cast within the jurisdiction of the rules or laws, will be happy and contented only in proportion to the degree to which the rules or laws are uniformly applied and administered.

It matters not by whom, by what system of courts, whether by one or two, that the laws are administered, the degree of content is measured by whether or not, as administered, they are the same. After all, this-the making and execution of good laws-is the whole of government, and every other part of its simple or complicated machinery revolves around this center and is intended to effect this end. In the light of history, ours is a novel government; when the tests of wisdom and experience, are, however, applied, we find it a model government. In its simplicity, however, it is hard for us-we who have lived in it, have been subjects of it,and who have praised it-to always have an accurate conception of it. We are at times disposed to think that we live in two governments, and that we are the subjects of two antagonistic powers, two contending kings. But government cannot be duplex, in that two departments can exercise antagonistic powers or functions and stand. In the exercise of all of its functions it must act as one, and while, as every thing else, it must have its parts, they must easily fit together and constitute a whole, free from friction, or alike other things, will wear, break, and dissolve. The government we live in is one perfect whole, though made up of two characters, the end of the powers of the one being the beginning of the rights of the other; and while in a sense we have two powers, each independent of the other and performing separate and distinct functions, together they constitute a whole; and as we find them to-day, the States would be little more than half equipped as governments without their Federal life, and the Federal government would be a dream, an air-castle, without the States. To perpetuate this grand system of government, to insure the development, progress, and happiness of our people, all friction should be guarded against in the creation and