Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub
[graphic][merged small][merged small]

FIRE COMMISSIONER OF NEW YORK CITY, WHO DISCOVERED THAT AT LEAST ONE FOURTH OF NEW YORK'S YEARLY FIRE LOSS OF 9 MILLION DOLLARS WAS CAUSED BY INCENDIARIES, AND WHO REDUCED THIS LOSS APPROXIMATELY 50 PER CENT. BY A CAMPAIGN OF FIRE PREVENTION THROUGH INSPECTION AND PUBLICITY [See "The March of Events"]

"SWIFT AND CHEAP JUSTICE"

IN THIS issue the WORLD'S WORK begins the publication of a notable series of articles on "Swift and Cheap Justice," by Mr. George W. Alger, of the New York Bar. In the last few years there has been a good deal of wild and undiscriminating criticism of American courts. We have learned, with much particularity of detail, that our American courts, like nearly all our other social and political institutions, are a disgrace to the Nation. They have been described as the ultimate resort of "privilege" - the "last enemy" to be overcome. A considerable amount of this agitation has unquestionably been badly informed sensationalism; yet our judicial system does call for reformation. Public opinion is now focussing on these tribunals as it has on so many other weak spots in the national organization; and nearly all leaders in American thought men like Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, Mr. William H. Taft, Attorney-General McReynolds, Mr. Frank B. Kellogg, Mr. Joseph H. Choate, and Mr. Elihu Root are taking the lead in the readjustment of our legal system.

[ocr errors]

For this reason a clear, dispassionate, and well-informed description of our courts, their failings and their virtues, with particular emphasis laid upon the essential remedies, is a genuine public service. There is probably no man in the United States better equipped for this task than Mr. Alger. Mr. Alger has studied the courts minutely; he approaches them with the viewpoint of a man who has no respect for old things simply because they are old; and, most important in a writer dealing with a subject so technical as this, he has an exceedingly attractive and illuminating literary style.

In his own quiet way Mr. Alger has wielded a great influence in recent years in stimulating the popular mind in the new ways of thinking. The very title of his latest book, "The Old Law and the New Order," sufficiently indicates the attitude with which he approaches all social questions. It has been his peculiar genius to detect particular faults in the body politic and to suggest essential reforms

several years before even the "reformers" had hit upon them. One of his earliest cases was that of a man who had been badly injured in a foundry explosion. Mr. Alger lost this case; the old principle of "fellow servant" and "contributory negligence" defeated him. This case, however, was the incident that made Mr. Alger the indefatigable investigator of judicial absurdities and general social anachronisms. Though he was only twenty-six years old and legally inexperienced, he spent his evenings drafting an employers' liability law, and, when he had finished his labors, he offered his measure to the politicians at Albany. For several succeeding years, the legislators used to find considerable amusement in listening to Mr. Alger arguing for his liability law with many of the "leaders" of the New York Bar speaking on the other side. In time, however, public opinon caught up with Mr. Alger, with the result that the present Employers' Liabilty Act of New York State is his work - a measure which Mr. Alger now regards as unsatisfactory but which, at the time it was passed, represented a remarkable forward step on the subject for New York. In furtherance of his reform, Mr. Alger wrote a law textbook on this New York law which has gone through two editions and is the standard authority in that state.

Ten years ago Mr. Alger became chairman of the legislative committee of the Child Labor Committee of New York, and he has personally drawn a great part of the bills by which that committee has improved conditions in that state. He also drafted the existing law in New York requiring the payment of the prevailing rate of wages in public contracts. He has served on the Law Reform Committee of the State Bar Association; is one of the organizers of the County Lawyers Association in New York City, and a member of its committee on legislation, and is a director of the Legal Aid Society and of the Committee of Fourteen in New York for the suppression of the Raines Law hotels.

Mr. Alger's writings, however, have especially brought him into public notice.

His essays, for the most part dealing with social and legal reforms, have been collected into two volumes, "Moral Overstrain" and "The Old Law and the New Order." Ex-president Roosevelt has declared that Mr. Alger's essays, and particularly the analysis of the theory of industrial liberty called "Some Equivocal Rights of Labor," in the first of these volumes, were very largely instrumental in formulating his own point of view on social problems.

In a sense, therefore, Mr. Alger is the literary sponsor for the present movement for "social justice." But the changes in our judicial methods, of which Mr. Alger writes, are not party matters; men of all political faiths favor improving the machinery of justice.

To this new series in the WORLD'S WORK, Mr. Alger brings a ripened experience and a sane, clear, constructive attitude. His law practice has been varied and substantial but not sensational; at the present time he is one of the receivers of the Wabash Railroad. Before he is anything else, Mr. Alger is a lawyer and he has consented to write these articles because he has a real desire to improve the dignity and usefulness of his profession.

I

THE BANKERS AND THE

CURRENCY

T IS natural that the bankers should protest against many phases of the new Glass-Owen currency bill. Many bankers, like many men in the other professions, are afraid of any outside interference with anything that directly touches their business.

The feeling that their interests are special and should not be touched except under their guidance has become so strong in the minds of some bankers and business

men in the United States that they no longer believe in the United States Government. They are habitual irreconcilables. For example, the president of a large industrial company, in advising Congress to follow the advice of the Chicago

Bankers' Convention, said:

I always believed that men experienced in any class of business who have been tried out

and proved successful are better able to formulate the policies of the concerns that they are handling, whether they be banks, railroads, or industries, than a miscellaneous set of men that never had any experience in managing affairs of any kind, and in most cases have not been successful in handling anything.

Following this line of thought we should allow the woolen manufacturers to write the woolen tariff, the steamship companies would vote themselves a subsidy, the admirals would increase the size of the Navy. The wildest of the "miscellaneous set of men" seldom speak with less statesmanship than this.

Of course, Congress often passes bad measures, just as other people fail in business. It is likewise often true that more information from experts would often tend to improve legislation. But such business men as the one quoted above render their knowledge unavailable by the narrowness of their vision. A currency bill that meets the requirements of the bankers that met at Chicago may or may not be most beneficial to the other bankers, and to the other non-banking people who compose ninety-nine per cent. or more of the total population. Undoubtedly the men who met at Chicago are wise in their own profession but it is not in human nature that they should be wholly disinterested, and a Congress that allowed them to dictate a currency bill would share the same fate that befell the last Congress that allowed the interests that were directly affected to write a tariff.

The best leadership that has appeared among the banking fraternity is that of Mr. Reynolds, of the Continental-Commercial Bank of Chicago, for his plan was constructive, not irreconcilable. His idea was to get the bill improved as much as possible and then to help it to become law.

The bankers' committee that went to

Washington seemingly accepted the inevitable Government control of the Regional Reserve Board. But their influence was toward delay in the passage of the bill, on the assumption that it was hasty legislation.

This it is not. If the bill is not a good bill it is because its framers can not make it a good bill and at the same time get it

through Congress. Plenty of time was spent in its preparation.

We have had at least four years of currency reform in talk and investigation. The public has a right not only to expect a reformed currency but to expect its speedy enactment. Congress is responsible for the kind of reform we get and the time it takes for us to get it.

E

THE FEAR OF CHANGE

MINENT bankers say that unless the changes they suggest are made in the currency bill direful consequences will ensue, that all business will be demoralized, and that even such prosperity as we have achieved under the present bad currency system will be in jeopardy.

Though, of course, their suggestions merit careful consideration, their prophecies of ruin should not be taken too seriously. Such prophecies have been made before

under similar circumstances and without any very evil results. In 1887, Congress had under consideration an elaborate plan to regulate the railroads. The railroad men and their friends, in Congress : and out, were as successful and intelligent men as those who now fear the governmental control of currency. They objected for essentially the same reason that the bankers now object to the Federal Reserve Board: the railroads were the exclusive business of their managers; a "miscellaneous lot of men" could not be trusted to legislate about such a technical business as railroading.

Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, of Rhode Island, voiced these fears as follows:

What I find fault with is that in order to cure evils which are apparent to the farmers of Illinois or Michigan, you propose to demoralize the whole commerce of the country; you propose to establish an arbitrary, unjust, unreasonable, impracticable rule, which, while it will do what you say, will do much more.

The Congressional Record quotes Senator Platt, of Connecticut, as follows:

It seemed to me, with my knowledge of the history of the management of railroads, and with my knowledge of legislation upon this

subject, that the result would be an immediate rate-war by all the railroads of the United States.

Senator Hoar, of Massachusetts, said:

Here is a proposition which, in my judgment, would be destructive to great business interests in the country, especially to the export business of the principal city of the state which I represent.

On January 31, 1887, the New York Tribune expressed its opinion in these words:

This bill is intended to help Western farmers especially. The Tribune believes that it will do them more harm than good, not because many of its aims are not meritorious, not because it lacks excellent features, but because it contains provisions which will increase the cost of transportation for producers and consumers alike, will bury transporting companies under mountains of litigation, interfere with the building of new roads where they are needed, and in the end do much to bring into disrepute and odium restrictive measures undertaken sincerely for the public good.

And in an editorial on March 24, 1887, the New York Sun said:

Of all haphazard legislation that Washington has ever known, this paternal governmental Interstate Commerce Act now appears to us as perhaps the most thoughtless and mischievous that has ever been put forth. If the combined legislative force of the Nation had done a thing as remote from reason and common sense as would be the ruling of an ape upon the Supreme Bench, and if upon its consequences, which are supreme, the greatest interests of the country must hang in doubt, peril, and confusion, what would we expect as its first results?

Far from demoralizing the railroad business, the Interstate Commerce Commission has had a powerful influence in placing it upon a stable basis. It is now one of the world's greatest tribunals; though the President appoints all its members, political considerations do not influence its acts and it has not developed into an instrument of oppression. Perhaps we may have as good fortune under the GlassOwen currency bill. Years hence, when the present discussion has been forgotten, and the country is going its

usual prosperous gait, some antiquarian, on the outlook for literary curiosities, will amuse the public with the direful comments which certain sections of the press are now making upon the present currency plan.

A PATIENT PROGRAMME WITH MEXICO

A

SPEEDY settlement of the Mexican problem is out of the question, for the Mexican problem will be with us in a more or less aggravated form until that country establishes peace throughout its borders. It is now suffering from the accumulated ills of the last two years since revolution wrenched Mexican affairs out of the iron hand of Porfirio Diaz. The constructive processes that must follow such disruption are slow even when they are started and we can therefore hardly look for an end to Mexican troubles for some years to come. But, on the other hand, once the constructive forces get under way our problem is no longer acute.

For Mexico's sake and for our own we should do everything in our power to help it start its building up process aright. It could hardly do that under Huerta, for his claim rests solely on a military usurpation of power. His becoming Provisional President was but another step away from constitutional government. If he had the ability of Diaz, as he has the courage and cruelty, this grim old Indian might also establish a lasting dictatorship. But he has not the wisdom of his former master and, therefore, probably not the ability to maintain a place of power to which he has no claim but strength.

President Wilson is optimist enough to believe that Mexico is ready to begin building up. He has chosen to try to help that country on its big, far-reaching task, a task which Mexico must undertake if it is to get its affairs on a permanent basis of peace and progress. It is a statesmanlike and patriotic programme that the President is following, and the Senate, including most of the Republican members who put patriotism above partizanship, has risen nobly in its support. To help Mexico help

herself is a programme that will demand infinite patience and good will and real patriotism. And it is not a programme from which any political capital can be made, for there is nothing dramatic in it. Yet it is a great task, in which, if we succeed, we shall merit the world's thanks.

LABOR UNIONS FOR PEACE

R

ECENTLY 563 delegates, repre

senting 2,250,000 workmen, met in Manchester, England - the Fortysixth Annual Trades Union Congress. The American Federation of Labor was represented by two delegates, and for the first time Canada, Germany, and France were also represented. In welcoming the delegates the Right Reverend James E. C. Welldon, Dean of Manchester, said that he looked with the utmost hope to the development of international trades unions as agencies of universal peace.

"It is you, above all other bodies," he declared, "who will put an end to war among the nations."

Although the present union organizations, even abroad, have not a strong enough hold to withstand the pomp and panoply of war, they are nevertheless an ever increasing influence against large armaments. The workingmen realize more and more clearly that, though they pay taxes for military equipment and do yeoman's service in the ranks, the profit of wars goes elsewhere. The power of numbers should make the unions a great force for peace, but so far there has not risen from their ranks a great leader to make their force effective.

[blocks in formation]
« PředchozíPokračovat »