This action on the part of President Cleveland was supplemented in July, 1894, by a general blanket injunction issued from the Federal district court in Chicago to all persons concerned, ordering them not to interfere with the transmission of the mails or with interstate commerce in any form. Mr. Debs, president of the American Railway Union, who was directing the strike which was tying up interstate commerce, was arrested, fined, and imprisoned for refusing to obey this injunction. Mr. Debs, thereupon, through his counsel, claimed the right to jury trial, asserting that the court could not impose a penalty which was not provided by statute, but which depended solely upon the will of the judge. On appeal, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the lower court and declared that imprisonment for contempt of court did not violate the principle of jury trial. It was not merely labor leaders who were stirred to wrath by this development in judicial authority. Many eminent lawyers saw in it an attack upon the ancient safeguards of the law which provided for regular proceedings, indictment, the hearing of witnesses, jury trial, and the imposition of only such punishments as could be clearly ascertained in advance. On the other hand others held it to be nothing new at all, but simply the application of the old principle that injunctions could issue in cases where irreparable injury might otherwise ensue. They pointed out that its effectiveness depended upon speedy application, and that the delays usually incident to regular judicial procedure would destroy its usefulness altogether. To workingmen it appeared to be chiefly an instrument for imprisoning their leaders and breaking strikes by the prevention of coercion, peaceful or otherwise. At all events, the decision of the Supreme Court upholding the practice and its doctrines added to the bitterness engendered by the income tax decision--a bitterness manifested at the Democratic convention at Chicago the following year. The crowning cause of immediate discontent was the financial policy pursued by President Cleveland,[39] which stirred the wrath of the agrarians already agitated over inflation, and gave definiteness to an issue on which both parties had been judiciously ambiguous in their platforms in 1892. The farmers pointed out that, notwithstanding the increased output of corn, the total amount of money received in return was millions less than it had been in the early eighties. They emphasized the fact that more than half of the taxable acreage of Kansas and Nebraska was mortgaged, and that many other western states were nearly as badly off. The falling prices and their inability to meet their indebtedness they attributed to the demonetization of silver and the steady enhancement of gold.