Pago Bay, but this school receives no financial or other aid from the island government. Board of Health, which holds its regular meetings once a month. Finances. The finances are in good Health. The general health of the condition. The crop of copra, still natives has been good. The Samoan handled by the government, may be Hospital, completed in September, somewhat reduced in 1913, owing 1912, has proved to be very success- to the unfavorable weather. The ful; 2,517 persons were examined amount produced up to June 30 was and treated therein, and 187 opera- 14 tons less than that produced durtions were performed. The most ing the same period of the year prevalent diseases are tuberculosis, 1912. The contract for the 1913 yaws, eye diseases and intestinal copra crop was awarded at a price parasitical infections. These diseases of $100.25 per ton, an increase of receive the careful attention of the $6.50 over the 1912 contract price. Alaska BIBLIOGRAPHY MILLER, Hugo H.-Economic Conditions Porto Rico BLOOMFIELD, Meyer.-Study of Certain Compilation of the Revised Statutes and Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of IX. LAW AND JURISPRUDENCE FRANCIS M. BURDICK FOREIGN JURISPRUDENCE Hague Conference. He points out that the use of checks is unfettered in this country International Bills of Exchange.-esting account of the proceedings The draft of a uniform law on bills and an instructive discussion of the of exchange, referred to in the YEAR differences between our law of checks BOOK for 1911 (p. 149), was again and that proposed by the second taken up at the second Hague Conference on this subject in 1912, and given a final form for adoption. All the leading commercial nations of Continental Europe and of Latin 'America bound themselves at this conference to secure the enactment of this uniform law by their various legislatures. It is expected that within two or three years, every commercial state, except Great Britain and her dependencies and the United States, will have adopted this law. If this expectation is realized, international trade will then need to concern itself with but two legal systems governing bills of exchange. This conference took up also the subject of international checks. Continental law does not treat a check as a species of a bill of exchange, as does our law, but as a legal instrument quite distinct from a bill. It requires, therefore, a separate statute for its definition and regulation. The conference adopted a series of resolutions formulating the principles in accordance with which a draft for a uniform law of checks is to be made. This will be considered at a future conference, and will be adopted undoubtedly by the countries which have not accepted the English legal conception of the check. The report of the United States commissioner, Charles A. Conant, on the conference of 1912 and on the proposed law of checks, has been printed as Sen. Doc. No. 162, 63d Cong., 1st Sess., by the Government; and presents an inter except by such regulations as are nec- of legislation throughout the world is cannot be doubted.1 Belgium has enacted a statute for the purpose of safeguarding the physical and moral environment of children. It has been under discussion in the Belgian Parliament for nearly a decade, and embodies many provisions which have been found to work well in this country, including one for a new magistracy, the "Children's Judge." has been enacted in France, though Legislation of a similar character the French statute does not provide for separate juvenile courts. Existthe poor, to pensions for workinging laws relating to tenements for men, and to frauds in the sale of merchandise, especially adulterated arti parative Law Bureau of the American Bar Association, July, 1913. 1 See the Annual Bulletin of the Com cles, have been amended, with a view | belongs to the photographer, he is to securing greater protection to the not allowed "to publish it without obpoor and helpless. The volume of public statutes in Great Britain for the second and third years of George V looks surprisingly small to a citizen of the United States; it contains only 146 pages, comprising 31 chapters. The most important of these are the Minimum Wage Act (Chap. 2, A. Y. B., 1912, p. 130); the Shops Regulation Acts (Chaps. 3 and 24), directing that "no assistant in such a shop shall be employed for more than 65 hours a week, exclusive of meal times, and shall be given 32 whole holidays on a week day in each year and 26 whole holidays on Sunday in every year, with certain intervals for meals"; amendments to the White Slave Act (Chap. 20); amendments to the Aerial Navigation Act (Chap. 22), enlarging the authority of the Secretary of State for War on this topic; amendments to the Trades Union Law (Chap. 30); and an Act to consolidate and amend the law relating to Pilotage (Chap. 31). The most important statutes for the third and fourth year of George V are the Children's (Employment Abroad) Act (Chap. 7), restricting young persons from going abroad for the purpose of performing for profit; the Herring Fishery (Branding) Act (Chap. 9), a bit of pure-food legislation; the Fabrics (Misdescription) Act (Chap. 17), making the misdescription of inflammable goods a crime punishable in a summary manner; the Forgery Act (Chap. 27), consolidating, simplifying, and amending the law relating to forgery; and the Mental Deficiency Act (Chap. 28). (See also IV, The United Kingdom.) Upon becoming a member of the union for the protection of authors of literary and artistic works, under the Treaty of Berlin of 1908, Holland found it necessary to revise its legislation on this subject. Its new law extends protection to all publications and writings, without regard to their artistic or literary value. While the copyright of a portrait or photograph This Act was passed to correct the defects of existing law. See "Some Anomalies and Shortcomings of Lunacy Law," 29 Law Quarterly Review, 179, April, 1913: taining the consent of the subject painted or photographed, during his life, or of his next of kin for a period of ten years after his death." The law, it will be observed, accords even greater protection to the right of privacy than does the statute of New York of a similar character (L. 1903, Ch. 132). The various states of Latin America have shown themselves subject to the same legislative currents that prevail elsewhere. Argentina permits foreign corporations to do business in that country, providing that they file proofs of their legal organization in their home state. Bolivia and Nicaragua recognize the validity of civil marriages, and Ecuador has accorded to married women the right to make contracts as well as to buy, hold, and convey real estate without their husbands' consent. Costa Rica and Nicaragua have entered upon labor legislation, regulating the payment of wages and the arbitration of labor disputes. While legislative activity has not been great in Spain, it has extended to the "construction of cheap houses," regulating their rentals and exempting them from taxation for 20 years. It has reformed the contract of apprenticeship in the interests of the apprentice. It has fixed the tariff of attorneys' fees for many kinds of service at a very low figure; regulated the capitalization of corporations; provided for the better treatment of women employees in stores; limited the hours of labor in mines, and prohibited the employment of children under 16 and of women in any kind of subterranean labor. Judicial Decisions.-A Belgian court has no more doubt than an English or American court would have that a promise to marry a woman within eight months or to pay her 7,000 fr. in consideration of her cohabiting with the promisor is void as against public policy (Court of Appeal, Liège, Pasicraisie Belge, 1913, I, 9); or that a court should decree the dissolution of a partnership which could be continued only at a loss (Tribunal of Commerce, Ghent, ibid., 1912, III, 103). The rights of a pledgee in France to property which has not been actually delivered to him, under Art. 92, Code of Commerce, and Art. 2076, Civil Code, are different from those secured by the English common law, as shown in Liquid, de la Soc. la Cellulose française v. Soc. Générale (Cass.-Req., 2 Jan., 1912). In Larose v. Naux (Cass. Civ., 20 April, 1912) it was held that the French Employers' Liability Act extended the liability of the employer to an accident befalling his employee, through chance or the latter's unskillfulness, in falling and breaking his leg while entering a hotel after a business engagement with a customer. With the foregoing case may be compared two recent decisions under the Workmen's Compensation Acts in England, which are adverse to the employee. In one the question was whether a journeyman baker whose right hand had been injured by frostbite while driving on his rounds in his employer's cart was entitled to compensation as for an "injury by accident arising out of and in the course of the employment"; the House of Lords affirmed the decisions of the lower courts that it was not (Warner v. Couchman, 1912, A. C. 35, 81 L. J. K. B. 45). In the other case, the employee was killed by a drunken bully because he warned the bully not to stand so near the horse which deceased was driving, lest the horse might hurt him. Such death was held not the result of an accident arising out of and in the course of employment (Mitchinson v. Day, 1913, 1 K. B. 603, 82 L. J. K. B. 421). litigated cases between employers and employees going to the House of Lords has greatly increased since the enactment of Workmen's Compensation Acts, while the total number in all of the courts is enormous. The Complete Current Digest of the Law Reports, of Aug. 1, 1913, devotes 40 fine-type columns to these cases. Indeed, so numerous have they become that many treatises have been published with a view of deducing the principles of law established by the decisions. One of the latest of such books devotes 76 closely printed pages to the exposition of the first section of the Workmen's Compensation Act. Certainly the statute has not realized the expectations of its sponsors as a statement of legal rules which could not be misunderstood even by the man in the street and could be swiftly and unerringly administered by lay arbitrators. Rickards v. Lothian (1913, A. C. 263, 82 L. J. P. C. 42) is notable as showing the disposition of English courts to narrow the doctrine of Rylands v. Fletcher (L. R. 3 H. L. 330). It holds that a landlord who had provided on the top floor a water supply and lavatory for all tenants of the building was not liable for damages to the goods of a tenant on a lower floor, inflicted by the overflow of water from the lavatory, caused by the malicious act of a third person who choked the overflow pipe and turned on the tap. The Privy Council declared that the landlord in supplying the lavatory was putting his land to a reasonable and ordinary use and not "to some special use, bringing with it increased danger to others." They also declared that had the use been of such a hazardous character, the landlord would not have been liable, as the damage was not due in any legal sense to his acts, but to the malicious act of another, which he had no reason to anticipate. In both of these cases, as in most of the cases in England under the Workmen's Compensation Acts, the controversy involves no broad legal principle. It calls for the determination of a question of fact, or for the construction of a statutory phrase. Sir Frederick Pollock has referred to The House of Lords has decided these decisions as "the wearisome that, under the Trades Dispute Act tale of Workmen's Compensation of 1906, "no action in respect of any Cases" (29 Law Quarterly Review, tortious act alleged to have been com247). It was supposed that this leg- mitted by or on behalf of a trade islation would do away with a great union can be entertained by any mass of litigation, but the Law Re- court, whether such tortious act was ports show that this expectation has or was not committed in contemplanot been realized. The number of tion or furtherance of a trade dis pute" (Vacher & Sons v. London Society of Compositors, 1913, 82 L. J. K. B. 232). Another interesting decision connected with trade unions is that of Oram v. Hutt (1913, 1 Ch. 259, 82 L. J. Ch. 152), holding that a union is guilty of maintenance and acts ultra vires in paying the costs of a slander suit brought by one of its officers for slanders reflecting upon his management of the union. The costs thus paid amounted to £949, which the defendants in the above entitled action were compelled to restore to the union's treasury. An action for misapplication of funds or for illegal expulsion may be maintained against the union, such proceedings being founded in contract and not in tort (Parr v. Lancashire and Cheshire Miners' Fed., 1913, 1 Ch. 366, 82 L. J. Ch. 193). LEGISLATIVE TENDENCIES Volume of Legislation.-No one can even glance at the columns of Session Laws of the current year without amazement at the volume of legislative output. California leads the van, and its legislators appear to be proud of this distinction, for they print in the forefront of the huge bulk of session laws for 1913 the name of the author of each act. These acts number 699, besides 99 joint resolutions and constitutional amendments, and fill 1,746 closely printed pages. In addition to the foregoing, the constitution as it stood before these amendments is reprinted, covering 50 pages in small type. Such a document is not limited to outlining a frame of government, but is filled with multifarious details suggested by petty and temporary controversies. Such a constitution encourages, if it does not necessitate, annual broods of amendments. But, the California legislators of 1913 did not stop with proposing changes in the constitution. They tinkered with multitudes of existing statutes and added a vast mass of new legislation. It is fair to say that a different spirit prevailed in some of the other legislatures. Connecticut limited itself to 241 chapters, occupying but 271 pages; and South Carolina and Texas showed almost as great self-restraint. they are suspended until the general election in November, 1914, when they will be submitted to the electors. At the election in November, 1912, several acts passed by the legislature of 1911 were repealed by popular vote. Initiative Statutes. - Perhaps the most extraordinary piece of initiative legislation of the year is found in the Montana Session Laws (pp. 593-616), "A bill to limit candidates' election expenses," etc. Legislative Plagiarism.-Two of the California statutes referred to above, the Red Light Abatement Act and the Blue-Sky Act (see XIII, The Conduct of Business), were copied from the legislation of other states. One or both were copied also by Arkansas (Act 214), Connecticut (Ch. 127), Florida (No. 2), Idaho (Ch. 117), Iowa (Ch. 137), and Minnesota (Ch. 562). The Bulk Sales Act is another piece of legislation which was copied by several legislatures, e.g., Arkansas (Act 88), Illinois (p. 258), Missouri (p. 163), South Dakota (Ch. 116), Washington (Ch. 175). The spirit and in some cases the letter of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act has been incorporated into state statutes and made applicable to intrastate business; for example, see Indiana (Ch. 117), Iowa (Ch. 310), Maine (Ch. 106), Michigan (No. 103), Minnesota Referendum Petitions. In accord- (Ch. 230), Missouri (pp. 549 and ance with the California constitution, 555), Montana (Ch. 7), New Jersey four important acts of 1913 have been (Ch. 210), New York (Chs. 408, 457), subjected to the referendum hold up. North Carolina (Ch. 41), Ohio (Ch. These are the Red Light Abatement 254), and South Dakota (Ch. 356). Act (Ch. 17), the Blue-Sky Act (Ch. The rule of the Carmack Amendment, 353), Non-Sale of Game Act (Ch. that the initial carrier shall be liable 579), and the Water Commission Act to the shipper for the negligence of (Ch. 586). But for referendum peti- connecting carriers, has been applied tions, these statutes would have be- to intrastate shipments in Michigan come effective on Aug. 10, 1913. Now (No. 389) and Minnesota (Ch. 315). |