dar call and go through the foolish form of answering "Ready," spending half an hour on the process, and then have the case marked "Passed for the day." We all of us grumbled. We were dissatisfied and justly so, but there was nothing which could be done about it. It is unnecessary to say that it would have been inadvisable for this lawyer to have told the judge that he did not know how to handle his own calendar and was wasting time unnecessarily. If there had been a head to that court, however, to which we could have gone with our complaint, a remedy would have been afforded in twenty-four hours by an efficient chief justice. The notion that a court can get along without a head is as intelligent as the notion that a business can get along without a head, yet the headlessness of the New York Supreme Court is as nothing compared with the headlessness, for example, of the Courts of Common Pleas in Philadelphia, which are split up into five air-tight compartments, each an absolutely distinct court, so distinct that if Court of Common Pleas No. 1, for some reason, has no case for trial and Court of Common Pleas No. 2, identical in character and jurisdiction, has twenty cases clamoring for trial, there can be no transfer from one court to the other. The proposition that a court to attain efficiency requires an organization is not a new one in law reform. It has not received the public attention which it deserves, however, because its adoption involves greater practical difficulties and concentration of effort, and so will necessarily take more time than other reforms now under discussion. The result is that other less vital matters have been more currently discussed in the several states than this fundamental reform, which is essential to them all. Take Philadelphia, for example. It needs a municipal court of the type of the Chicago court. The present condition of justice, especially to the poor, in that city is by common consent a scandal of long standing. Mr. Samuel Scoville, Jr., a member of the Philadelphia Bar and general solicitor for the Legal Aid Society of Philadelphia, described the condition of Philadelphia courts before the City Club of Philadelphia last November. The condition, as he pictures it, is intolerable in any civilized community. For delay and for expense there is perhaps nothing like it in any other large American city. He says: Take the typical case of a small wage-earner who was defrauded out of his wages, amounting perhaps to ten or twelve dollars. His claim is small in terms of money, but it bulks large in terms of work and sweat and need. If there is one class who must have speedy justice it is the small wage-earner, THE WORLD'S WORK whose wages are the very blood of his life. Now what kind of justice does he get in this state? First, he has to go down to a magistrate and pay about $5 costs to start a suit. In a week or so he gets a trial and automatically the magistrate enters judgment for him. Then he waits twenty days and is told that the defendant has entered an appeal and that the whole case must be tried over again in the Court of Common Pleas. Accordingly, he hires a lawyer for ten dollars who draws up a statement of claim and rules the defendant to file an affidavit of defence in fifteen days. When that is done, his lawyer then rules the defendant to plead, which takes fifteen days After that, the case is at last ready for the trial list. The creditor has spent fifteen dollars and waited fifty days before his suit is even begun. His troubles, however, have just commenced. After the case is on the trial list he must wait for about two years before the case is even reached for trial. I have had cases appear on the list six times before they were reached, and they were finally tried five years after suit was begun. Such conditions as these have aroused the attention of the Law Association of Philadelphia, which last December presented a report on the general condition of the judicial system of Philadelphia County. The report shows an extraordinary condition of congestion and delay, due to an inadequate number of judges attempting to operate an archaic system. The committee praises the Chicago Municipal Court, but, as it states, an amendment to the state constitution would be needed before such a court could be organized in Philadelphia. Assuming all due speed, it says that the time required for the necessary amendment and subsequent legislation would make impossible the creation of such a court in any event earlier than 1917. The committee, therefore, recommends temporary relief of a less satisfactory character, meeting pressing needs and nothing else. This report illustrates the reason that reform in judicial organization comes slowly where there is no effective public opinion demanding such reform. This committee of lawyers recommends a patching of the old system by the addition of a few changes to help get rid of the congested calendar. Why does it not recommend a well-organized municipal court to help the conditions which Mr. Scoville has described? The reasoning is interesting. The committee in its report says: In Cook County, in which Chicago is located, there are, in addition to the Municipal Court of thirty-one judges, a Circuit Court of fourteen judges and a Superior Court of twelve judges. The jurisdiction of the latter two courts is largely the same as that of the Municipal Court and there is a marked tendency toward the absorption by that court of the business of the other courts. It adds a little later: A judicial system should embrace only one court of original jurisdiction. To split up original jurisdiction among several independent courts, each ਪਹ having exclusive jurisdiction of a portion of the litigation, is unscientific. The example of the English and Federal systems admonishes us that a number of independent courts of exclusive and original jurisdiction will in time yield to the demand for unification and consolidation. On the other hand, to create several courts of concurrent jurisdiction will result only in a competition for business in which the most efficient tribunal will attract all the litigants and lead to consolidation in order that the methods and procedure of the most successful court may be extended to all. For this reason the committee is of the opinion that the municipal court is but a temporary device to ameliorate existing conditions. If the older courts will not yield to the reasonable demand of litigants to modernize their practice, procedure, and methods, the creation of a municipal court may become necessary in order to compel the ultimate modernization of all the courts. A little leaven will leaven the whole lump, and thereby make the leaven itself unnecessary after it has done its work. Therefore, says the committee, we do not recommend its use! It declares: Competent observers believe that it is but a matter of time when, in Chicago, there will be a revision of the judicial system and a consolidation of all the civil trial courts, so that the successful methods of the new municipal courts may be applied to all civil litigation. From the possibility of any such revision, Philadelphia will be spared if the judgment of these jurists is accepted by the people. The danger of leaven in the judicial lump fortunately is not appreciated in other cities. The influence of the organization principle of the Chicago Municipal Court is reflected in the inferior criminal courts of New York City, in the Municipal Courts of Cleveland, Buffalo, and Milwaukee. It is the basis on which the Bar Association of St. Louis has asked for a Municipal Court for that city, and of a movement for a similar court in Kansas City. As I write, a commission appointed by the New York legislature is at work reorganizing the Municipal Court of New York City. If the adoption of coördinated business systems for the lower civil and criminal courts of our cities produces the results which are confidently expected of them [and feared in Philadelphia] as experiment stations for cheap and speedy justice, their effect upon the higher courts will be irresistible. The success of these centralized, highly organized courts is bringing by contrast public attention to the unorganized condition of courts of higher degree. The opportunity for reform in organization is indeed great. The higher courts of practically all our states are more products of history than of constructive principles. They are growths and most of them have never been thoroughly reorganized since the passing of primitive conditions. The laws governing them are accumulations due to legislative tinkering and the united zeal of the place hunter and the legislative job creator. We have not yet fairly begun this process of reform in organization. As has been said, this is a very difficult kind of reform. In most states its accomplishment involves constitutional amendments, and the adoption of constitutional amendments necessarily and properly requires time. A committee of the American Bar Association, appointed to suggest remedies and formulate proposed laws to prevent delays and unnecessary cost in litigation, made a report to the Association in 1909 which embodies the ideal to which this movement for judicial reorganization should tend. The committee submitted the unification of the judicial system as a first principle which should control in judicial organization. It says: The whole judicial power of each state, at least for civil causes, should be vested in one great court, of which all tribunals should be branches, departments, or divisions. The business as well as the administration of this court should be thoroughly organized so as to prevent any mere waste of judicial power and of needless clerical work, duplication of papers and records and the like, thus obviating expense to litigants and cost to the public. This report follows the reasoning of Professor Roscoe Pound, in a memorable address given before the American Bar Association in 1906, in which he declared that our system of courts is archaic in three respects: In its multiplicity of courts; in preserving concurrent jurisdiction; and in the waste of judicial power which it involves. This subject of judicial organization is one in which the assistance of business men is of demonstrated value. It was the Commercial Association of Chicago which led in the organization of its Municipal Court. It was largely through the urgency of business men in other cities that the municipal court idea has been adopted elsewhere. If business men in large numbers could be made to appreciate the extent to which their services could be of value in this particular branch of reform, its progress would be facilitated greatly. To a large extent, of course, the main questions of law reform are of a technical character which requires the expert work of judges and lawyers. The question of the form of organization, the business system of justice, however, is one in which the judgment of business men can well be utilized. The doing of justice is not business, but the organization of the machinery by which justice can be done efficiently is business. No higher service can be done by men skilled in organization than this work of, first, creating the necessary public demands for the business organization of the courts, and second, when that demand has taken concrete form and the way has been cleared, of establishing the courts upon a plan which is ordered, intelligent, and adequate. ΤΟ WHAT I AM TRYING TO DO GIVE TWO MILLION CHILDREN A CHANCE IN VOCATIONAL CONTINUATION LEM - TO ORGANIZE EDUCATION SO THAT GOOD VOCATIONAL BY H. E. MILES (PRESIDENT OF THE WISCONSIN STATE BOARD OF INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION, CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE ON INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURERS) I AM one of many who are trying to make it possible for every boy or girl who leaves school at fourteen to continue his or her education while working. We are trying to make our public school methods practical and useful, by providing vocational education for every child who needs it, at public expense. If, to do this, it is necessary to upset existing educational conditions, then we may fairly be said to be trying to reorganize public education in the United States. There are two million children, between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, out of school in this country. Recent investigations indicate that not more than half of these are at work at any one time, or were forced to leave school through economic pressure. The other half are idle. Practically all left school because the schools did not hold their interest. School had become distasteful to them and their parents had tired of insisting on their attendance. Most of these children have left school at or before the end of the sixth grade, as half of the pupils in the public schools do, and as all do who enter our industries. For the vast majority of these children this has been the least of their schooling. For decades we have been turning loose every year an increasing number of boys and girls at the critical period of life, the beginning of adolescence, when their developing character needs guidance the most. And we have given them little or nothing in school that is of real service to them in facing the problems of life. Last year the state of Wisconsin gave free vocational education five hours a week or more to 17,000 persons, mostly boys and girls. This year it will do the same for 25,000 pupils, and next year for 40,000. These are children who are at work, and their employers are paying them for the time spent in school. The Wisconsin law requires every child between fourteen and sixteen, whether employed or not, to attend these schools unless he has already completed the elementary school course. Our special continuation vocational schools have solved, in a simple yet highly efficient and practical manner, the biggest educational problem confronting the people of the United States. The schools can be opened everywhere with the minimum of delay and conducted with the minimum of expense. Several other states have already begun to establish them, and many more will follow. Let no one imagine for a moment that vocational education is a matter of dollar-getting only. The worker must be made super-excellent, if may be, in his trade, but as character is infinitely more important than dollar-getting, the worker is taught, as of infinite importance, "citizenship," his relation to society, to the government of city, state, and nation, his rights and how to get them, his obligations and how to observe them. None of these things is taught by the end of the sixth grade, when half our children leave school. Little of them is taught even in our high schools, into which only one in five of our children goes, and from which only one in thirty graduates. |