makes its way along the lines of least resistance, and we must expect that when the forces which dominate congressional legislation perceive that all the trade of the Philippine Islands and Oriental countries cannot be forced into the Suez Canal, discrimination against Pacific Coast cities and our transcontinental railways will cease, and, under conditions which will permit fair competition, our commerce will continue to expand.

While our captains of industry and hosts of laboring men have by their genius and labor contributed to the production of great wealth, foreign capital in large amounts has been attracted to our country for investment, and our population is continually augmented by the coming of all classes of emigrants from foreign nations.

National progression along the lines already mentioned has excited envy in the minds of people in other countries, and Americans have been denounced in extravagant terms as idolatrous worshippers of mammon; inordinate greed of managing officers of large corporations and dishonest methods and uncleanness in the preparation of food have been exposed; and moral degeneracy has been predicted. All this has had a reactionary effect. When we have been scolded as sinners we have not replied, " And thou likewise;" on the contrary, there is cause for hope and gratitude to God in the fact that the national conscience responds to admonition. Although the "muck-rake" has been as destructive as a hail storm in Nebraska, the nation has not resented its use, and there has been manifested a sincere desire to eradicate the things which tend towards national degradation.

Substantial advancement has been made towards the plane of higher civilization. Institutes of science and art have been founded and endowed. For the promotion of higher education, individuals who have amassed great wealth have made munificent contributions, and learned men have devoted their time and talents. Every state has its institutions for the amelioration of the miseries of the unfortunate. Temples of religion have been erected, every village has its church, and every hamlet its school for the free education of the children and youth. The principles of sanitation have been studied and applied for combatting the

ravages of disease; pure food laws have been enacted and enforced, and for the betterment of the physical conditions of the masses and the cultivation of esthetic tastes, parks and means for recreation have been provided, to which the public are freely admitted; millions have been expended in expositions for the enlightenment of the world by exhibitions of the products and arts of all nations. These are matters which cannot be more elaborately presented without extending the length of this paper beyond a reasonable limit, and I will not do more than refer to the enlargement of the military and naval power of the United States, and the vast expenditures in devising and providing means for national defense and military education.

Political reformation looking to the attainment of the ideal, in a republican form of government, is now in active progress. Bribery and large contributions by individuals and corporations of money, to be used to influence elections, is discountenanced by all the political parties; and publicity of the details of contributions and expenditures for electioneering purposes has been promised. These are concessions to a popular demand for political purity, and justify a reasonable hope that the reformatory movement will not stop until each individual voter will do more independent thinking, and campaign managers with funds to disburse and subsidize newspapers will be dispensed with.

The end has not come yet; we must continue to progress, or stagnation will be followed by retrogression and decay. This hurried review suggests many problems for statesmen to solve, for ever-changing conditions must be met with wisdom and firmness. Works of great magnitude can only be accomplished by the use of large aggregations of capital and the exercise of adequate power. The people are now demanding that these instrumentalities must be regulated and controlled in a larger measure by the national government.

Under the statute prohibiting monopolies and combinations. in restraint of trade, commonly known as the " Anti-Trust Law" of 1890, a number of important cases have been successfully prosecuted against railroad and other large corporations; and the Supreme Court has decided that its provisions afford a legal

remedy against the boycott evil. Further activity to be expected, in enforcing that law, will augment the volume of business of the national courts. There is a strong tendency to depend upon the national government for the eradication of all manner of evils, fancied as well as real. The exposure of maladministration of certain large insurance corporations was made a pretext for attempts to secure the enactment by Congress of laws regulating the insurance business, and it has been gravely proposed to place all corporations under the restraints of national laws. Even the domestic relations and divorces have been suggested as proper subjects for regulation by national laws. This trend towards paternalism has influenced legislation by which the government has assumed new burdens. For example, the recent legislation by Congress in the interest of employees in the railroad service, and of passengers, and of shippers of livestock, comprising a group of statutes all prompted by humanitarian sentiments. The employers' liability statute, if it shall be sustained, as re-enacted by Congress, will be an efficient promoter of increased litigation, cognizable in the federal courts. It deprives the railroad carriers of the principal grounds of defense heretofore available in actions to recover compensation for personal injuries suffered by employees while in the performance of their duties, and places no limit upon the amount of damages which may be awarded. Advocates of this law have justified it, on the theory that it is unfair to leave sufferers from accidental injuries, happening in the public service, and their families to bear all the consequences; and that there is no injustice to employers as a class in requiring them to render compensation, because ultimately all that is paid in settling damage claims will be collected from the people at large. Conceding this proposition to be true, as stated, and further that wise legislation to secure the result intended is desirable, nevertheless the statute which Congress has enacted is incomplete and unjust to injured employees as well as to the general public. Judging by the results to be expected, it is a law to stimulate litigation, rather than to afford protection and provide for compensation to the injured. As it stands, the victims of accidents and their families are left dependent upon

specialists, that is to say, damage-case lawyers and damage-case doctors, to establish their claims, unless they accept whatever terms of settlement the employers are willing to agree to without litigation. The law itself discourages settlements, because it gives the hope of possible recoveries of exorbitant sums, and energizes the lawyers and doctors in their efforts to bamboozle juries with theoretical ailments and suffering, known to the courts and the medical profession by the names of “neurasthenia" and "railroad spine." If it is right to compel the public to contribute money to alleviate the sufferings of the injured and their families, it is, nevertheless, injustice to impose the additional burden of expensive litigation, which in the end yields larger profits to the lawyers and experts than benefits to their clients and patients. And it often happens that plaintiffs having no substantial grounds for heavy damages secure larger awards than others having superior merits.

Injured employees can be more adequately compensated and their employers can save money and the courts may be relieved of responsibilities, and the expense of maintaining the courts can be reduced, by requiring employers to issue to each employee a ticket of insurance against accidents, specifying the amount of indemnity during a period of total disability, and for the loss of each limb, and each eye, and for loss of life, exactly similar to accident policies issued by regular insurance companies. Under that system all claims for personal injuries can be adjusted and settled between employers and employees with no more friction than there is now in settling claims against insurance companies for losses insured against.

Some time in the future, not very far ahead, people will view with mingled wonder and amusement the vast law libraries of the present day, containing myriads of hair-splitting decisions of questions pertaining to the topics of negligence, contributory negligence, assumption of risk, and the fellow servant rule. Very likely some student of antiquity will read a paper before the American Bar Association and amuse his hearers by telling them that as late as the year 1910 juries of twelve men were kept in confinement for hours, often all night, and sometimes for days,

in order to compel them to agree on the amount of compensation to be awarded to an employee of a public service corporation for a personal injury, and this after a trial lasting from four days to a considerably longer period, in which a cross-examining lawyer on one side exhausted himself in strenuous efforts to quiz and befuddle witnesses and in working the prejudices and sympathies of the jury by noisy harangues, all of which would have been detrimental to his side of the case were it not for the fact that his adversary behaved as badly.

At the present time there is considerable agitation in favor of legislation to restrict the power of the federal courts to issue injunctions in cases involving disputes between labor organizations and employers of labor. All the parties and candidates have made declarations by which they hope to win the votes of workingmen. It is wicked and unfair to honest workingmen, as well as to the courts, to make political capital out of the false assumption that workingmen can be benefited in any way by legislation which, if effective at all, would fetter the courts or strip them of power to grant preventive relief against threatened violence and irreparable injuries. Thirty years ago campaign orators tried to hoodwink voters by declaiming against the riot act, as if that statute bore oppressively upon the working classes, and that buncombe was not more unworthy of consideration than the present agitation against the writ of injunction. It is to be noted that the advocates of such legislation have been challenged to specify an instance in which abuse of power in injunction suits or contempt proceedings has not been promptly rectified by the courts having appellate jurisdiction and that no candid response has been made. The truth of the matter is that, when controversies between strikers and employers have not been adjudicated in an orderly manner by the courts, the military power has been called into service to protect property and independent men at work, and in those instances turbulence has been subdued by heroic treatment.

In discussing this subject, prominent men and the newspapers have been prone to make an unwarranted concession that an existing evil needs to be corrected by legislation, as if the courts