Page:History of the Supreme court of the United States (IA historyofsupreme00myeriala).pdf/622



Seven days after its obliterating the income-tax law, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a decision which was then regarded, and has been since, by both legal profession and lay public, as one of the most extraordinary on record.

This decision was in the Debs case, which was a result of the great strike of the railway workers in 1894. That strike originated in the grievances of the workers in the Pullman Company's shops. Organized in 1867 to build sleeping cars, the Pullman Company, by methods which we have already described, possessed itself of the title to five hundred acres of land near Chicago. In addition to constructing its plant, it used two hundred acres for the building of what it called a "model" town. In this it accordingly owned the houses, the water and gas supply—and, in brief, controlled the town of Pullman absolutely. Tor its flimsy, congested habitations it charged its workers $18 a month rental; the cost of gas to the Pullman Company was thirty-three cents a thousand feet, yet the Company's tenants, comprising its own workers, had to pay $2.25 a thousand feet; taking advantage of the