and pure foods. Regulations of child labor are extended to bootblacks and to boys and girls selling newspapers in the streets. A day's labor on public work is fixed at eight hours. Tenement, apartment and lodging houses are regulated as to construction in great detail. Provision is made for the care of neglected animals. Art commissions are established in cities of the first class. No judgment in a civil or criminal case may be reversed for any misdirection of the jury, improper admission of evidence or for error as to any matter of pleading or procedure unless in the opinion of the appellate court it shall appear, after an examination of the entire action or proceeding, that the error complained of has affected the substantial rights of the party complaining.

WYOMING.

The grant of liquor licenses outside of cities and towns was prohibited and the amount of the license was increased from three hundred dollars to one thousand dollars. A day's work in mines and smelters was fixed at eight hours. A corrupt practices act was passed. Commissioners are appointed to deal with contagious diseases among sheep. The office of commissioner of taxation was established. He is to be an expert in matters of taxation, and is to have general supervision over the administration of all assessment and tax laws. Indefinite terms of sentence and the parole of prisoners was provided for. Persons divorced may not remarry, except each other, for a period of one year; violation of this act is a misdemeanor. The desertion by a man of his wife and children without making provision for their care is made a felony. He may at any time, however, before sentence, give bond to make proper provision, and sentence is then suspended. The salaries of public officers are subjected to garnishment. Provision is made for the examination and registration of trained nurses.

THE PEOPLE AND THEIR LAW.

ANNUAL ADDRESS BY

AUGUSTUS E. WILLSON,

GOVERNOR OF KENTUCKY.

I bring you earnest greetings, from my heart, as a citizen and fellow lawyer. While I have taken a service, strictly legal but not strictly professional, for a term of four years, I hold fast to the hope of coming back at the end of that work to my chosen lifework of a lawyer. I hold in high honor the character of the membership of this national Association, and the splendid public spirit and wise and noble usefulness which have, throughout its whole history, inspired its work and its words. It has never been a work for display, but always and solely for the public good. You have upheld what is good, you have secured for your country many changes for the better, you have worked steadfastly, wisely and faithfully for many things not yet achieved, and the future of this Association is rich in promise of continued benefits from its earnest purposes and its strong, practical common sense. I thank the Association and its officers for the generous kindness, which came to me as a great surprise, in the honor of the invitation to deliver the annual address. My best wish, I cannot call it my hope, is that my part in this meeting shall be in the spirit of your good and great work for our country.

I believed that your committee thought of me for this address because it was my lot to have had a part in events which have serious bearing upon the future of our liberties and welfare, and in that belief, I chose as the subject of this address, "The People and Their Law."

In Crowley vs. Christensen, the Supreme Court declared:

"The possession and enjoyment of all rights are subject to such conditions as may be deemed by the governing authority of the country essential to the safety, health, peace, good order and

morals of the community. Even liberty itself, the greatest of all rights, is not unrestricted license to act according to one's own will. It is only freedom from restraint under conditions essential to the equal enjoyment of the same right by others. It is then liberty regulated by law."

Robinson Crusoe, on his lonely island, was not forced to obey the will or rule of any other man or men, but his exile, deprived of all the blessings of living with his kind, was not liberty but wretched slavery. The instinct of man to live with his fellows is subject to the condition that each shall do his part of the work which is necessary for the life, comfort and happiness of all.

Perhaps you are curious to learn what useful knowledge on the People's Law I think can come out of Kentucky. We may, doubtless, easily agree that most of you are thinking that Kentucky needs to consider seriously the duty of upholding the power and the righteousness of the People's Law. But I should not be true to my people if I did not stand firm against admitting, much less assuming, any such premise. On the contrary, let me declare that nowhere in the world is there a truer, stronger, more intense devotion to law than in Kentucky. It is our heritage, birthright, pride and joy, and prized as the very fortress and heart of our liberty. I shall use my time in a homely, matter of fact talk on the subject from the Kentucky standpoint, because that will, I believe, be the most useful point of view for our whole country.

Kentucky, like Tennessee, settled originally by men of English, Scotch and Irish origin, and for generations, in great part, widely removed from the great thoroughfares of immigration, has had from the first, and still has, less foreign immigration and admixture and that more completely assimilated, and more truly "straight American "-than any other state. We can tell best from Kentucky, I believe, what the real American will do about the People's Law, in the long run.

Speaking a few days ago to several hundred youthful prisoners in the Kentucky Reform School, I said that they were kept prisoners because they would not play the game according to the rules, and that the people could no more get along or live with their neighbors without rules, than baseball could be played with

out them, and that all of the rules and all of the things we do to enforce them, grew out of the fact that without them there would be no liberty, safety, pleasure or interest in life in community.

The government stands on the faith that we are all free and equal before the law; that every one has a fair start in the race of life, so far as the law goes; that, as Abraham Lincoln said in 1858, answering Mr. Douglas, each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far as it interferes with no other man's rights.

The pioneer men and women who left home and kin and traveled the wilderness road over the Alleghanies and Cumberland Mountains from the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina and the hills of Maryland, and came down into the deep woods of the dark and bloody ground of Kentucky, occupied by fierce savages, won a place in the history of mankind, which, perhaps, no other people ever gained.

It was a breed hard to head off and good to have on your side. I opened at random the early pages of a history and put down every name I came to for several pages, and this is the way they read: Clarke, Boone, Bullitt, Helm, Hardin, Knox, Harlan, McAfee, Marshall, Douglas, Floyd, Preston, Breckinridge, Shelby, Smith, Logan, Galloway, Lincoln, Patterson, Lindsey, Linn, Estill, McDowell, Wilkinson, Brodhead, Murray, Allen, Caldwell, Pope, Garrard, Boyle, Daviess, Rowan, Johnson and other names-all of British origin.

As soon as Virginia gained her independence in 1776, she established the county of Kentucky and a county court with law and equity jurisdiction, which began at Harrodsburg in 1777. In 1780, Kentucky was divided into three counties, and in 1783 the district court was established for Kentucky and met at Harrodsburg, and because there was no house there to accommodate the court conveniently, it was opened at a meeting-house six miles from Harrodsburg. The attorney-general and the clerk were directed to "fix" on some safe place near Crows Station, close to the town of Danville, for holding the court, and to procure a log house to be built large enough to accommodate the court in one end and two juries in the other.

In 1774, a convention adopted a resolution " in favor of an act to render Kentucky independent of Virginia," and recommended "that the election of deputies for the proposed convention ought to be on the principle of equal representation." Butler's history states that the representation of Virginia was formed on the territorial principle, in disregard of population, and adds that:

"The decorum of the public proceedings of this assembly, as well as that of the conduct of the attending citizens, are particularly remarked," and that "this early and unanimous indication of the democratic or popular spirit, in one of the earliest public assemblies of Kentucky, is a faithful key to her political complexion."

The convention adopted a petition to the legislature of Virginia and an address to the people of Kentucky "in a style of dignity and ornament yet unprecedented in the history of Kentucky." The legislature of Virginia received the petition and provided for an election to determine whether Kentucky should be independent.

The historian again bears witness to the character of his people:

"Thus, then, had the people of the district been tantalized from December, 1774, to January, 1779. It is, indeed, a high and honorable proof of political order and subordination in Kentucky, that so impetuous a people, should, under such circumstances of irritation and disappointment, have preserved the peace of the state; and this . . . . in defiance of such repeated mockery of their expectations."

This story shows that while the Kentuckians of the early days. were pioneers-daring, fearless, strong, hardy, able to stand work, hardships and privations, ready to face any task or danger in clearing forests, breaking up and working the soil, fighting the English in the open or the savage in ambush-they understood clearly the value and power of combination, organization, discipline and obedience, and carried with them the instinct for establishing laws and courts, and were typical, native American citizens, fit to found a state, to obey and to rule.

From the camps in the woods to the stockades and final settlements, they carried the People's Law with them and planted a