Topeka, 74 Pacific 606, a private citizen is denied the right to maintain an action en joining city officers from allowing the use of the city auditorium for entertainments for private profit, even though such use may be wrongful. The court says that it has been repeatedly held that a private partv cannot maintain an action against a public officer where the acts complained of affect merely the interests of the public generally. Before he can maintain such an action and challenge the conduct of public business, he must al lege an interest personal and peculiar to himself, that is not shared by and does not affect the general public. The fact that the plaintiff in this case was a large tax payer and was the proprietor of places of amusement which were injured by the com petition thus created by the city fathers, is held not to give him such a standing as to sustain the action. STRIKES. (INTERFERENCE WITH PICKETS— RIGHT TO ENJOIN.) NEW JERSEY COURT OF CHANCERY.

In Atkins v. W. & A. Fletcher Co., 55 Atlantic Reporter 1074, striking machinists sought to enjoin interference by their For mer employer and an association to which it belonged, with pickets maintained by them in an orderly manner. The interference was alleged to be by intimidation, threats, vio lence, arrests, etc. In an oral opinion, the chancellor says that complainants are before the court as employers, and not as employés, the pickets being their servants. That the former em ployer of the complainants had the right to combine with other employers to refuse em ployment to any class of. workmen, as fully as employés have the right to combine to refuse to be employed. The mere fact that defendants, by intimidation or criminal vio lence, interfere with the free flow of labor to complainants, does not give them the right to equitable relief, since the complainant em ployer must show substantial money dam ages, for which no adequate legal remedy exists. "The injunction, at the instance of

an employer, in these strike cases, was forced out of courts of equity because the situation presented was one where, without injunctive relief, ruinous losses to the com plainant would be inevitable. Railroads and larga plants of machinery were paralyzed, aggregations of capital lay idle, while the persons acting in combination, who by their interference with the free labor market had caused and were continuing this great pe cuniary loss, were themselves irresponsible pecuniarily. It is to this class of cases, in my judgment, that the strike injunction should, under present social and business conditions, as far as possible, be confined." In conclusion, the court holds that the right of a voluntary association engaged in sup porting a strike to freedom in the labor mar ket, so that it can readily employ pickets and other agents in carrying on its indus trial warfare, is not a proper subject of pro tection by Injunction. But one authority is cited, Jersey Printing Company v. Cassidy, 63 N. J. Eq. 759, 53 All. Rep. 230, and that is on the point that the complainants appear in court as em ployers whose right to have labor flow freely to them is being interfered with. TICKET BROKERS. (WORLD'S FAIR TICKETSINJUNCTION то PREVENT TRAFFIC.)

MISSOURI SUPREME COURT. In Schubach v. McDonald, 78 Southwest ern Reporter, 1020, writs of prohibition were applied for by a number of St. Louis ticket brokers to prevent the St. Louis Circuit Court from further entertaining injunctionsuits brought by railroad companies to pre vent the plaintiffs from trafficing in World's Fair tickets issued by the railroad compan ies at reduced rates and made non-transfer able. While the case turns on the sufficiency of the pleadings below, and the propriety of the injunction is not directly determined, its atmosphere is significant of a possible hold ing that the traffic in question can be en joined, the jurisdiction of the lower court be ing upheld and the writs denied.