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thousands of dollars in attempting to put American diamond cutting upon the basis of one of the established industries of the United States? It almost makes one think that an informer lurks at the bottom of these suits, which can be begun at his dictation, in the name of the great government of the United States, without cost or expense to him. The informer reaps the usufruct, while the government furnishes him the services of a special attorney of the Immigration Department, and the United States District Attorney, and if he reach the Supreme Court of the United States, the services of the Attorney General and Solicitor General of the United States. Court costs and expenses of printing records and briefs come out of the treasury of the United States, which we are all taxed to fill.

The learned counsel for the government have attempted to paint the defendants in very black colors. It is hard to believe that Mr. Herman Keck is a bad man when he contributed to the comfort of these men when cooped up at Ellis Island, and restored to Mr. DeGraff wages which had been properly deducted by the foreman on account of illness. Every word and line of testimony show Mr. Herman Keck to be a generous soul, a tenderhearted employer and a champion of honest wages.

Now, gentlemen of the jury, in conclusion, do you think a stigma should be placed upon the defendants who have spent their fortunes to establish a great industry?

Do not send these defendants among their business associates branded as violaters of law and with their heads bowed in shame, but send them forth in triumph as victors emerging from a mistaken prosecution. Let them go, and devote the money which the informer seeks to wring from them, in building up an enterprise which will be a credit to themselves, their families, their city, their state and to the people of the United States of America.* *The jury returned a verdict of not guilty.

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Commercial Aspect of Uniform

State Laws.

(An address delivered before The Cincinnati Credit Men's Association at The Business Men's Club, Tuesday evening, February 19, 1907.)

Mr. President and Gentlemen

At the close of the American Revolution and even after the adoption of the articles of Confederation, each American State was not only a political unit but an industrial and commercial unit. Means of communication were few and cost of transportation almost prohibitive except in border and coast cities. Each state not only determined its political future but its own industrial and commercial policy. The Constitution of the United States, adopted in 1789, recognized the fact that each state continued as a political unit and at the same time created another political unit, the nation at large. It also recognized in part the Union as one commercial unit and each State as a separate commercial unit. On the limited subjects of foreign commerce, bankruptcy, coinage, patents and copyrights, exclusive jurisdiction was vested in Congress to legislate for the entire nation. On the great and important sub

ject of commerce it divided authority by vesting in Congress power to regulate interstate commerce and left each state to regulate its own commerce. By leaving to each state power to regulate all production and its own commerce, it limited the power of Congress by restricting that body to the regulation of interstate commerce. Therefore, there grew up a separate body of laws in each state of the American Union. An unfortunate (and by many now believed, erroneous) decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1869, in the insurance cases, that a contract between citizens of different states did not constitute interstate commerce checked the growth of that unity of law so convenient to the development of industries national in character. While these constitutional provisions tended to localize industry and commerce, the invention of new means of transportation by steam and rail and new methods of communication by telephone and telegraph caused commerce to override state lines and to make that economically national which was legally local. In other words, that which by law is the commerce of each of the forty-five states of the American Union became in fact

commerce

national in character. It was the failure of our forefathers to foresee that some day the states would become one country for commercial pur

poses that resulted in vesting in Congress the power to regulate only interstate commerce instead of vesting in that body power to regulate all commerce.

For one hundred years, from 1789 when the Constitution was adopted, to 1890 no practical remedy was presented to free commercial intercourse from the inconvenience of a distinct law for each state. There was no central body having power to mold into one law-into one unit-commercial usages and give to them a legal sanction so as to produce one rule for all commercial transactions through the entire country. In 1890 the state of New York suggested a remedy by creating a commission on uniform state laws and inviting the Governor of each state to appoint commissioners to a national conference. The first meeting of the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws was held in 1892 and the year 1906 marked the sixteenth annual conference.

That body had presented to it three questions to solve:

Did commerce suffer from the existing manner of expressing the law merchant?

Would codification afford a remedy?

How could uniformity be brought about?

That commerce did suffer from the present

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