control. In the second place, there is no inhibition against congressional action impairing the obligation of a contract or against retrospective congressional legislation. Also, even apart from the federal act, it would seem that limitations should not run under the conditions. Most states have statutes which toll the statute for a time when suit is impossible. and the construction given to the federal control act of 1918 by many courts was to the effect that carriers were exempt from suit. Certainly every moral right is with the shippers who were precluded from collecting their claims for two years and bore for that time the burden of the loss. It would be a harsh ruling that would now declare that this enforced delay has rendered them remediless, and it is not believed that there is any rule of law which requires such a holding.

The New York Rent Law.

Neither

HE court of last resort in New York has sustained the validity of the legislation in that state regulating rental contracts. So far as may be judged from press reports, the decision takes advanced ground as to the police power, announcing the doctrine that however private and personal and however lawful and legitimate a business may be, if the complexities of civilization give to it a proximate relation to the public health and comfort, it may be taken out of the domain of private contract. The doctrine of public interest, once deemed to be confined to corporations exercising a public franchise, is being rap idly extended into every department of private business, until it is but a slight exaggeration to say that there is no limitation on the legislative power to regulate legitimate industry. That hard cases make shipwreck of the law is being more and more clearly exemplified. courts not legislatures are wholly deaf to the plea of Portia: "Bend but once the law to your authority, and balk this cruel devil of his will." If we come to an end of constitutional government, the fault will lie largely at the door of those whose unjust exactions have made regulations of novel 'severity seem essential to the public safety. It is true that it is often better for the public that a temporary injustice be borne than that long tried safeguards should be thrown away, but where a very considerable number of voters suffer from the injustice it is difficult to convince them of the virtue of patience exercised for the benefit of their posterity. Somewhere there lies a happy mean between a constitution which binds a progressive people to the standards of a past century and a constitution which is a rope of sand. Grave abuses must be checked, and on the other hand legislative methods and ideals are such that legitimate business cannot thrive if left to the unfettered whims of the legislative assembly. The discretion of the courts as to what is a legitimate exercise of the police power is some safeguard, but judges, however just and learned, are not by education and training the persons best fitted to pass on the needs of the people. It is a transition time of some danger, and calls for serious and considered action by bench and bar, by legislator and constituent, to pass through it safely.

Presidential Primaries.

THE HE growing dissatisfaction with the convention system of nominating candidates for President has led to the suggestion of several plans for a Presidential

Primary. Among them is the "Rodey Plan" propounded by Mr. B. S. Rodey of Albuquerque, N. Mex. Omitting some administrative details the plan is stated by its author as follows:

"Let candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency, both partisan and independent, compete in the primaries of their own states, and if so desired, in one additional state. Then let the winners at these primaries be a group of candidates for president and vice-president to compete nationwide at the November election. At the November election let every voter select and vote for, from this group of candidates on the ballot, his. or her first and second choice for president, and first and second choice for vicepresident; second choice to have effect only in case of the death or disability of the first choice before inauguration. It can be seen that the names on the ballot might be only a few, or as many as a hundred, depending on circumstances."

It is somewhat difficult to see offhand how this plan can work well. It starts with the "favorite son" of each state and then puts the entire list before the nation. It is doubtless contemplated that the popular vote and not the vote by states is to be counted, but even so it is practically impossible for any candidate to secure a majority vote. In view of that fact, the nomination by states seems to be particularly ill advised, for a President nominated peculiarly as the representative of a state and elected by a minority vote would not be considered generally as the representative of the nation. Moreover the multiplicity of candidates would obscure the issues. Each candidate might insist on a particular issue as "paramount" and base his claim on it, thus scattering the vote widely, and in consequence a compact body of adherents of a particular measure the prohibitionists for example could elect a President whose policy was opposed to the convictions of nine-tenths of the voters. There is at present too much of rule by minorities, without opening new doors to this evil.

Another System.

THE HE "Rodey Plan" does not seem on the whole to be comparable in advantages to what is known as the Hare System of Proportional Representation. By that system, which has operated successfully in foreign countries, a single vote is taken for both nomination and election. The names of candidates are placed on the ballot by petition, signed by a comparatively small number of electors. The voter indicates at the election not only his first choice, but his second, third, and so on. In counting the votes, if no man has a majority of the first choice votes, the second choice votes of each candidate are added. If this does not give a majority third choice votes are added, and so on until some candidate has a majority. The advantages of this over the "Rodey Plan" are manifest. secures the privilege of nomination without catering to the "machine" of the candidate's residence, and makes

It

allowance for the possibility that two desirable candidates may reside in the same state. And in respect to the election, the successful candidate under the Hare System is the person agreeable to the largest ascertainable number of voters. There is no chance that a candidate whose views are highly objectionable to the majority could be chosen, for he would not receive their second or third choice votes. The trouble with all these plans is that,

however excellent their theory, they will not under existing conditions have much practical effect. Under the Hare Plan, for example, there would doubtless be unofficial party conventions, and the concentrated efforts of the party workers would almost inevitably secure the election of the convention nominee over his scattered and ill supported competitors. In like manner a sitting President with the power of the government office holders behind him could secure re-election rather more easily than under the present system. It is but just to say in this connection that the advocates of the Hare System admit that as thus far developed it is better adapted to local than to national elections, and as thus limited the plan promises some distinct relief from political party control of municipal affairs.

Forgery of Finger Prints.

T HROUGH the courtesy of Mr. Albert S. Osborn, the writer has read recently an English novel "The Red Thumb Mark" which deals interestingly with a case wherein a charge of robbery was pressed against the hero because the print of a bloody thumb identical with the thumb print of the accused was found at the scene of the crime. The situation is given point by the fact that it has been declared in England that a finger print is "an unforgeable signature" and of itself sufficient to sustain a conviction. Parker v. Rex, 14 Com. L. Rep. 681. The situation is skillfully developed, and introduces at last the defendant's expert who demonstrates in court the ease with which finger print forgery may be committed. Asked in court if the forgery of a finger print is as easy as that of a signature he says: "Much more so, and infinitely more secure. A signature, being written with a pen, requires that the forgery should also be written with a pen, a process demanding very special skill and, after all, never resulting in an absolute facsimile. But a fingerprint is a stamped impression-the finger-tip being the stamp; and it is only necessary to obtain a stamp identical in character with the finger-tip, in order to produce an impression which is an absolute facsimile, in every respect, of the original, and totally indistinguishable from

it." It would perhaps be unwise to put into general circulation a detailed description of how such a forgery may be perpetrated, but it is no more difficult than many other feats of photogravure. It is well if such books as

this put an end to the superstition that a finger print is

an infallible means of detection. Such a view if it beSuch a view if it be came common would certainly lead to more than one miscarriage of justice. The true status of such a point was well stated in words put into the mouth of the expert in the book referred to: "A finger-print is merely a facta very important and significant one, I admit—but still a fact, which, like any other fact, requires to be weighed and measured with reference to its evidential value." To make his point clear the writer of the novel permitted the perpetrator of the fraud to commit certain technical errors which made it possible for the expert to establish beyond question that the print was made by mechanical means, but in an actual case these might well be avoided. In the novel, also, the experts whose testimony supported the genuineness of the thumb print were put to confusion by being confronted with genuine and forged thumb prints and asked to discriminate between them. There are de

cisions in the United States relative to the cross examination of handwriting experts which do not permit this very effective test. Sooner or later a forged finger print will find its way into an American case, and counsel are advised not to be obsessed with the idea of its finality.

The New York Pistol Law.

THE workings of the New York Pistol Law, which should cause every burglar and robber to burn a votive candle before the image of its author ere starting out to steal and murder, are well illustrated by the following clipping from a recent issue of a metropolitan journal:

Mrs. E. Harrison, an actress living at the Hotel De France, who fired a shot at two burglar suspects when, it is alleged, they tried to enter her room early last Thursday, was arrested to-day on a charge of violating the Sullivan law in having a dangerous weapon without a license, and was held in $500 bail for trial in Special Sessions.

The scene is worthy of a comic opera. The burglars, each of whom is doubtless armed, flee, but the young woman whose fortunate possession of a weapon enables her to protect her property and perhaps her life from criminal violence is held under a charge of felony, and this in a city where every morning the papers carry the tale of new robberies and murders, almost invariably terminating with the statement that the perpetrators escaped. Perhaps no worse piece of judicial legislation was ever perpetrated than the construing of the life out of the constitutional guaranty of the right of the people to keep and bear arms for their protection. The individual is paramount. Government is a mere device to secure the welfare of individuals. When government fails to protect the citizen from lawless violence and yet deprives him under pain of imprisonment of the means to protect himself, it stultifies the purpose of its creation, and even were police protection to become so perfect that every citizen might sleep in peace, with no thought that he would be called on to protect himself, how many generations of that kind of life would it take to make a people so soft that the Hun and the Visigoth would sweep it from the

earth?

Simplifying Stock Transfers.

MR. CHARLES F. BEACH, the well known American jurist, now residing in Paris, writes to LAW NOTES calling attention to a plan which he has submitted to a number of large American corporations to simplify the transfer of stock in case of the death of a foreign holder of American shares. As is well known much American stock is held in Europe, often in small blocks, and the encouragement of this form of investment is greatly to be desired. Mr. Beach enumerates the documents now ordinarily required to permit a transfer of stock held by a French investor and says:

but not always. Thus in a case now in the office, having to do with only five shares of stock of a par value of $50 and a real value of something less, they run to fifty-five closely written legal-cap pages.

These documents are sometimes not too difficult to deal with,

Then we are usually called upon to produce:

(a) a receipt or waiver in relation to the Inheritance Tax in the State where the Company is organized;

(b) evidence of compliance with the Federal Estate Tax Law;