In Re Debs34 was presented the question whether, for the protection of the mails, as well as of interstate commerce, the Federal Government may, by the use of judicial restraining orders or the employment of its armed forces, prevent interference, or whether it is obliged to wait until there has been such interference, and then punish the guilty ones in its courts. The court held that the former as well as the latter means was open to it.35

34 158 U. S. 564; 15 Sup. Ct. Rep. 900; 39 L. ed. 1092.

35 "Doubtless, it is within the competency of Congress to prescribe by legislation that any interferences with these matters shall be offenses against the United States, and prosecuted and punished by indictments in the proper courts. But is that the only remedy? Have the vast interests of the nation in interstate commerce, and in the transportation of the mails, no other protection than lies in the possible punishment of those who interfere with it? To ask the question is to answer it. By article 3, section 2, clause 3, of the Federal Constitution it is provided: 'The trial of all crimes except in cases of impeachment shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the State where the said crimes shall have been committed.' If all the inhabitants of the State, or even a great body of them should combine to obstruct interstate commerce or the transportation of the mails, prosecutions for such offenses had in such a community would be doomed in advance to failure. And if the certainty of such failure was known, and the National Government had no other way to enforce the freedom of interstate commerce and the transportation of the mails than by prosecution and punishment for interference therewith, the whole interests of the nation in these respects would be at the absolute mercy of a portion of the inhabitants of that single State. But there is no such impotency in the National Government. The entire strength of the nation may be used to enforce in any part of the land the full and free exercise of all national powers and the security of all rights intrusted by The granting to Congress of the power to declare criminal interference with the mails, or, indeed, interference with the performance by any federal agent of his official duties, does not necessarily carry with it an exemption of such postal agents from arrest and punishment by the States for violations of the States' penal laws, even though the operation of the mails may, incidentally and to a slight extent, be affected.36