It should be noted that since our work began each application received has been accompanied with check for dues in advance. This is the first year that membership work has been conducted on the advance payment basis. In previous years the acceptance of applications without requiring advance payment of dues has resulted in a large number of new members failing to pay any dues, with the consequent heavy loss to the Association by reason of the expense of sending the JOURNAL to such new members and clerical work connected with membership. The expenses of the committee have been heavy on account of the fact that it was necessary to lay new foundations. Nevertheless, the cost per new member has been greatly reduced and the average cost per new member is now less than the dues which we received from new members elected during the current year, notwithstanding the fact that new members are not required to pay dues for a full year but pay only for the unexpired quarterly periods of the fiscal year following their election. It is safe to say that at least 50 per cent of the total of the committee's expenditure for the current year may be considered as capital invested or prepaid expense which will bring returns during the next fiscal year.

During the past year material has been prepared and campaigns for new members inaugurated in thirty-two states, including the states of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming, representing an approximate total of 24,000 letters which were prepared, signed and mailed. In addition a special list of judges and law school men were sent invitational letters, making in all a total of more than 28.000 letters sent out.

Material for membership campaigns in the states of California, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and West Virginia, has also been prepared, and much of it is ready for use immediately after the annual meeting. Intensive campaigns were conducted in a number of the states in the latter group during the year 1926-1927, and the lapse of a year will doubtless result in better returns from efforts which may be made in the coming year. We shall not attempt to set forth herein the increases by states. Very satisfactory returns are coming in from Western states. New York, Illinois, California, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are still far in the lead in total membership. The total membership today is very nearly 28,000 members, and we believe this can and should be brought up to 50,000 within the next few years.

It has been the intention of your committee to build state organizations with at least one representative in each county of every state, to the end that the mail campaign will be followed up by an organized personal solicitation.

It is the belief of the committee that much good will be accomplished by removing the restriction which requires three years admission to the Bar before admission to membership in the American Bar Association. This restriction excluded the younger men and the committee feels that the Association needs the young men, and that the young men need the influence of the Association. The removal of this restriction will immediately bring into membership a considerable number who have already filed application.

It is our recommendation that the Membership Committee be con. tinued as a special committee until the organization work heretofore

outlined and undertaken, is completed, and that the present state directors, who by their cooperation have helped build the country-wide organization, continue in office for the present.

We gratefully acknowledge the splendid cooperation from the staff at the office of the Association, from members of the Executive Committee, from members of the General Council and others interested in the work.

On motion duly made, seconded and carried, the report was adopted.

Chairman Whitman:

The report of the Conference of Bar Association Delegates, by its Chairman, Mr. Josiah Marvel, Wilmington, Delaware.

Mr. Marvel:

It perhaps might be wise if I suggested to these new members of this Association that the Conference of Bar Delegates was organized thirteen years ago under the auspices of Elihu Root for the reason that while the individual members of the American Bar Association come here to represent their individual selves, there was no arrangement by which Bar Associations as a whole could have a voice in the affairs of the American Bar Association. So this Section was created with a membership appointed by the State and Local Bar Associations throughout the country, three from the state and two from each local bar.

As a result the 200 members or 150 members that might come as representatives to this Conference from year to year represent perhaps ten times as many lawyers who are not able to attend this meeting. They speak not as individuals. They speak in a representative way for all the membership of the Associations back home.

That Conference for these thirteen years has very largely devoted itself to being a hand maiden of this Association. It has attempted to carry out the policies and plans and purposes of this Association insofar as they did not conflict with the work of committees or of other Sections.

During the past year activities have been had by our Conference pertaining to the selection of judges, to the relation between the Press and the Bar, and Bar organization throughout the United States. Our Conference is not committed to any form of Bar organization. We do not recommend any particular kind.

But what we try to do through our delegates is to interest the lawyers everywhere throughout the country in state and in local Associations to develop, to increase, and to manifest a greater interest in the profession of which they are a part.

Another very active work of the last year has been an attempt to develop greater interest in the rule making power of the Court. We do not need to explain the purpose of that activity. You are all familiar with the arguments in its favor, and you may be familiar with arguments, if any, against it. Last year we used our time very largely in attempting to disseminate information pertaining to the rule making power of the Court. During this last year we have attempted to develop that into action. The result as it stands today is that there are five states with statutes giving the courts power to make rules, some of them rules with the force of law. There are seven states that have created Judicial Councils with varying powers and duties, and there are now over thirty states in which active committees are considering the subject for the purpose of reporting during the coming winter when the different Associations have their annual meetings.

The interest in this has been most encouraging for two reasons, first, because of the great merit attaching, as we believe, to the rule making power of the courts, and secondly, because through the assuming of responsibility by the courts in prescribing rules of practice and procedure, the Bench and Bar will be made to feel individual responsibility for the administration of justice.

We are of the opinion that that reform, the rule making power by the courts, instead of by the Legislature, will lead to many reforms, because of the fact it will arouse in the minds of the American lawyer in every state a feeling that Bench and Bar in state and nation constitutes the third department of government in the state and nation; and when the Bench and the Bar show a willingness and the ability to assume the responsibility, we doubt not that the Legislature will give them the power and that many other reforms pertaining to the administration of justice will be accomplished.

When the delegates to our Conference go back home and urge the rule making power, the matter of discipline, the matter of judicial selection, and all of the other things that pertain to our work, I bespeak your cooperation and help.

We have no recommendation other than to report our progress and ask your permission to continue our work.

(See Summary of Proceedings, infra, p. 516.)

Chairman Whitman:

The report of the Committee on American Citizenship will be made by Mr. F. Dumont Smith, Hutchinson, Kansas, as Chair

man.

Mr. Smith:

Since the last meeting of this Association we have reorganized our committees. We now have at least one member of the special committees on American Citizenship in every Congressional district in forty-five states, and in some states more than that. In other words, we now have a stable, continuous, working force, commissioned by the President, of nearly 500 members of this Association.

The committee continues a two-fold object. We are repeatedly asked to engage in other lines of work like alien citizenship. Our business is teaching the Constitution, to teach it in the common schools and to teach it to the young lawyers.

Thirty-six states have laws requiring the teaching of the Constitution in the common schools. One state, Texas, has a resolution, which, of course, is of no effect whatever. But there is very little effective teaching except in a few states. This is no criticism of the teaching profession, who are always underpaid and generally over worked. However, these committees of ours, in approaching the school authorities, are having remarkable success.

Our further object is to teach the Constitution to the young lawyer, which, unfortunately, a majority of the Law Schools of this country are not doing. Our appeals to the Law School gentlemen have met with no response. Last winter we appealed to the boards of Law Examiners, who are lawyers, members of our profession, and had a remarkable response. These law examiners from forty-three states have assured us that next year as a part of their examination for admission to the Bar, there will be searching questions on the Constitution, not simply on the legalistic phases of it, but its background, its history, structure, and the reason for it. Most of them desired us to formulate and send them questions of our own suggestion, which we did.

In three states these questions were submitted and I received the markings of these applicants for the Bar, and it was an amazing and shocking revelation. Some of these young men who desire to practice law rated as low as 22 on the Constitution; and taking them generally, if they had fallen as low in other branches of the law, not over one-third of them could have passed the examination and been admitted to the Bar.

The Law Schools of the country should take note of this and set their houses in order. They must bring their requirements up to the requirements that will be made next year and from thence on by the law examiners of the country.

This committee is not pessimistic as to the future; we are encouraged. Personally I think there has been a too pessimistic note in many of the reports that have been offered here. Undue pessimism is discouraging, and we don't want to make of the meetings of this Association a wailing place for the Bar of America. We must have more optimism.

We realize the indifference and apathy and ignorance of the American people today about their Constitution, but we think we know the reason for it. In the first eighty years of our existence the Constitution was a political subject. Political parties were founded, political battles were fought, and even government policies were formulated and carried out upon purely Constitutional lines. The positions of the two schools were ably set forth by Jefferson and Hamilton. As a result the Constitution was constantly debated in Congress by the greatest orators this country has ever known. It was discussed in the pulpit and on the platform, in the newspapers, in the shop, the office, by the forge and by the plow. Every one was familiar with it, and the great Constitutional contests were looked to as we look forward now to election returns.

The Civil War closed that debate, and when the decision in the Slaughter House Cases had restored the independence of the states we had apparently a settled government of balanced power. But human institutions are never static, and soon the pendulum began to swing the other way. So for forty years there has been a constant and steady encroachment on the power of the state, a constant and steady invasion of the rights of the individual and state, and aggrandizement of the central government. As a corol