o r- o CD L. II.. No. 1 PRICI, 10 CENT* LAWLESSNESS An Address delivered before THE Civic FORUM in Carnegie Hall, New York City December 12, 1908 BY CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT President of Harvard University WITH PORTRAIT NEW YORK THE Civic FORUM 1909 CorvmcHT, 19.^ THE Civic FoRi'M Lawlessness* Two months ago I wrote an inscription to be placed on the court house at Duluth as follows: "The people's laws define usages, ordain rights and duties, secure public safety, defend liberty, teach reverence and obedience, and establish justice." This is a great function for the law; and, if it be correctly described, the law embodies the most valuable parts of the experience of any people in its onward march towards liberty and righteousness. If this be a just descrip- tion of law, what a mischief and calamity it must be for any individual man, group of men, or community to be lawless ! The law does not attain its greatest dignity until it records the progress, embodies the sentiments, and ex- presses the resolves of a free people ; and yet it is freedom which gives the opportunity of lawlessness. We are to consider how American freedom has made possible lawlessness in many forms. The ordinary violations of laws intended to preserve the public peace are called crimes, and the individuals or small groups of persons who commit them may properly be said to be lawless ; for they commit offences against the public and private welfare which law is intended to protect. Rob- beries on the highways, hold-ups in city street-cars, in banks and shops, and in trains on railroads, burglaries in houses, banks, railway stations, and post offices, setting fires, picking pockets, assaults, and murders, are such crimes, which illustrate an extreme lawlessness on the part of individuals. These individuals are few in number com- *This address was delivered at the first meeting of THE Civic FORUM for the season of 1908-1909. Rev. LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D., presided and introduced the speaker. 3 0.93476 pared with the whole population ; but their lawless acts in total involve immense injury to society. The material losses are very great ; but worse than these losses are the perpetual apprehension and terror which these crimes cause. The defenses American society has constructed against this sort of lawlessness, though costly and burden- some, are utterly inadequate. The police force is insufti everywhere in this country; but it is almost helpless in rural districts. The high explosives, powerful tools, and fast vehicles which applied science has furnished are well utilized by criminals; but the resources of science are not effectively used by society in its own defense. Burglars study a village beforehand, then arrive in automobiles at night, cut the telephone and telegraph wires, fasten up the outer doors of the houses near the bank, blow open it- safe, snatch their booty, and are off in safety before any armed citizens can rally to attack them. The defenses of society against criminals have been broken down. A state mounted police, with a thorough military organization, is needed in every part of our coun- try north, south, east, and west. The impunity with which crimes of violence are now committed is a to the country, and demonstrates the urgent need of much more effective protective forces. These forces should be provided, whatever they cost, for the credit of free insti tutions, which ought to prove themselves at least as com- petent as other governmental regimes to provide the people with security for their lives and property. It is time the American communities realized that a government which does not secure to its people order, tranquility, and immu- nity from criminal violence and the fear of such vioK does not deserve to be called civilized. A vigorous use of proper protective forces will require a modification of the common American ideas about local government. that a motor car can run through half a dozen towns and cities in an hour, a police force which is used to operating only in one town or city will inevitably be ineffective. Again, quick action of the courts in criminal cases is indispensable. Our protracted criminal trials with their many volumes of typewritten evidence and arguments, their unreasonable technicalities, ingenious metaphysical de- fenses, and possibilities of appeal and re-trial, are travesties of justice, and in practice amount to a grave public danger. They account for a large part of the increasing distrust of courts in the popular mind. The forms of lawlessness thus far considered are, however, by no means the worst forms. A far worse form of lawlessness is the violation of law by commercial corporations. Many of these violations are not explicit, but implicit, that is, involved or implied in a course of conduct which seems fair on the outside. Thus in the commercial operation called promoting, the promoter organizes a corporation, issues a large amount of stocks and bonds which represent in real values only a small pro- portion of their nominal value, and then sells to a confiding public these stocks and bonds by means of false promises, and exaggerated estimates of profit. When a satisfying amount of stocks and bonds has been thus disposed of, he steps out himself, leaving the deluded share-holders to put what real value they may into the paper capital. No crime, or explicit violation of law may have been committed; but innumerable lies have been told, and many credulous people have been swindled out of their money. The operation taken in its entirety can only be described by the word ''theft," although it may be quite impossible to get the courts to deal with the thief as they would deal with a man who snatched a purse in the street, or stole coupon bonds from a safe. Nevertheless, this form of larceny is more vicious and much more injurious to society than the ordinary form. The common thief is an outlaw, and his exploits do little harm by way of example, even when they succeed. The dishonest promoter, on the other hand, does not necessarily become an outlaw, and when IK It, he is apt to stimulate others to attempt like iniquities, so that the ruin he works is widespread. The public mind is often confused on this subject, be- cause not all promoters are lawless. Some are only guine and ill-advised. They actually believe their own promises and predictions, and so are only chargeable with lack of good jjudgment or reasonable caution. Other pro- moters, who capitalize largely properties which look small to most people, are men of sound judgment, who have acquired at a low rate some property which has great in- trinsic value as yet undeveloped, so that the real pro; behind the paper capital is not extravagantly reprcsr in paper. These promoters, however, never abandon the enterprise whose stocks and bonds they have largely un- loaded on the public at a great profit. They remain in the management of the enterprise, and justify by their skill in developing income from the property, their original valua- tion of it on paper. Such promoters increase greatly the wealth of the country, as well as their own wealth. They are men who have the good judgment, or the good fortune, first to seize on undeveloped natural resources, and then to develop them patiently and wisely. In some respects, how- ever their early operations look like the operations of dis- honest promoters, and this resemblance confuses the public mind as to promoters in general. It is a real misfortune for society that the dishonest promoter so often escapes the clutches of the law ; because his kind of swindling can be. and often is, conducted without express and demonstrable violations of law. On this very account he is a peculiarly pernicious kind of lawless person. Any man. or any corporation, who conducts his business on the edge of the law, so to speak, is morally a lawless person, though he never gets over the edge; and any per- son, firm, or corporation, which conducts business in this way sets a very evil example in the community. An habitual law-evader is almost as bad as an habitual law- breaker. There are some unmistakable signs that a busi- ness is being conducted illegitimately, or on the edge of the law. When, for instance, a corporation seeks quietly, and in an obscure, unnoticeable act. new legislation intended to legitimatize corporate acts previously illegal, it is safe to infer that the corporation has been conducting its business in questionable ways, and is taking securities for the future conduct of its business in questionable ways. When a set of men who would naturally procure an act of incorpora- tion in one state proceed to another, and there procure an act of incorporation, the assumption is a natural one that they mean lo do in their business things which would be illegal in their own state. In the interest of the com- munity some states impose restrictions on the conduct of corporation business which other states carefully avoid imposing. Thus one may do things under an act of incor- poration obtained in Maine or New Jersey which one could not do under a Massachusetts or New York act; and yet the restrictions imposed in Massachusetts and New York are presumably for the good of those communities, and of any communities. They have been imposed by the legisla- tures for good and sufficient reasons. The presumption therefore is that the man, or the firm, or the corporation, that wishes to avoid these restrictions, is moved by the hope of selfish advantage to the injury of his neighbors, or of society at large. To call such a man, or firm, lawless would be going too far; but it is certain that men who thus act are not living up to the best standards of their calling or occupation, and are not taking due account of the public welfare. Low standards of business conduct are often justified by the statement that business cannot be conducted in con- formity with lofty ethical standards, that the business man must take his choice between destroying hi> business, or taking advantage of the lowest standards which the law allows. If the law in one state has foolishly set the ethical standard too high, the practical man will move his bu>. into another state where the standard is lower. A pa in. we cannot say of such conduct that it is lawless ; but we say that it is degrading to the man who perpetrat< and to the community which witnesses his career, particu- larly if that career is successful. It is a safe rule to suspect lawlessness in all 1m- transactions which have to be kept secret between buyer and seller, or between agents and their principal. When, for instance, a transportation company s or other illegal advantages to one shipper, but not to all >im ilar shippers, the act nin^t be kept secret, beca illegal, and the corporation which habitually does such things is justly described as lawless Any individual or company that accepts such favors is also lawless, and the profits which result from such secret arrangement are law- less profits. If it be contended that there are businesses highly advantageous to the community which cannot be carried on except in this lawless manner, the ans\\< that those businesses had better not be carried on at all. When a poor creature who had committed a contemptible act said to a hard-headed philosopher in justification of it "I must live/' the philosopher replied "I do not see the necessity." That is true of all hu not only the life of trade, but the great means of improvement not only in industries, but in the development of personal character. Competition is the great revealer to a man, or to a nation, of his own power and capacity. To know one's self is impossible without active competition with other people. A nation protected from competition will soon prove itself a stagnant, unprogressive nation, rich ami strong perhaps, so long as its abundant natural resources are not fully utilized ; but sure to decline when its further progress comes to depend on the trained skill and capacity 14 of the population as a whole. In family, school, and college, competition and emulation are the great animating and stimulating forces, wholesome and effective in the highest degree. It is just so in the great industries. To defeat competition, therefore, is to inflict a serious injury on so- ciety at large. We have thus far been considering chiefly corporation lawlessness, which is ordinarily lawlessness on the part of single men, or small groups of men, who are managing corporation business. We come now to another sort of lawlessness the violence of large combinations of men in prosecution of their pecuniary interests, or in resistance to wrongs they suffer actually or in prospect. Under this head come the lawless acts of trade-unions in pursuit of higher wages, shorter hours, or better conditions of work. The violence which ordinarily accompanies a great strike in a trade which employs many thousands of workmen is of the plainest and most elementary character. It consists of assaults with intent to kill or disable, either for the moment or permanently, of the destruction of property by explosives or by fire, of intimidating marches in great numbers and often at night, and of many less open, but equally formida- ble efforts to frighten into acquiescence non-union men and their families. No one doubts that all these actions are utterly lawless; but no one expects that the unions con- cerned will take any measures whatever to prevent such violence, or to punish it by their own action when com- mitted by their members. The community at large not infrequently sympathizes with the demands which the strikers are endeavoring to enforce. It seldom sympathizes with the violence used to enforce the demands. Occasion- ally the majority of the people seem not to object to the destruction of property, particularly the property of a trans- portation company; but they are generally offended by 15 violence directed against persons, particularly if it is mur- derous violence, or reaches women and children. Sometimes the unions or their leaders nominally object to violence ; but they never assist the public authorities in their efforts to prevent it. For this policy they may reasonably claim certain justifications. In the original resistance of the unions to unreasonably long hours, very low wages, and barbarous conditions in the places of work, the contention inevitably became that of warfare. Violence was inevitable. It was a downright fight which the unions entered into, and success was only to be won by sanguinary and destructive methods. To be sure, this condition of things long - passed away; but its influence survives. Hours an longer unreasonable, wages are fair, or high in most indus- tries and the physical conditions under which wage-earner-; labor have been in most industries greatly improved. Col- lective bargaining is an admitted improvement in many industries, and the right to strike is universally recogn XevertheleNx. lawless violence has repeatedly occurred in the American cities within very recent years in support of strikes, and much of it has been committed with impunity. Often in recent year-, but seldom during the past year, it has seemed to have contributed to the success of the strikers. It is proper to point out that under the new cir- cumstances violence to procure higher wages is violence on behalf of a purely pecuniary claim. It is not to be com- pared with violence in resistance to grave oppression and intolerable conditions of labor. It i> violence to get more money, and is on that account a peculiarly offensive form of lawlessness. In another respect the unions persist in methods which were originally necessary, bui are no longer even defensible. Thus they insist on the secrecy of all their preparations for striking, and on the absolute suddenness of the strike, so 16 that the employer shall have no warning. These are sound methods in actual warfare; but they are wholly unneces- sary to-day, and they are very destructive to the industrial interests of society as a whole. Violence secretly prepared, and breaking out suddenly, is a peculiarly objectionable sort of violence in civilized society. An incidental result of this policy is to induce manufacturers who employ union labor to keep in their service spies upon the proceedings of the unions, a practice which emphasizes very much the war- like relations between capital and labor. Society at large justly distrusts all secret organizations, and movements planned in secret. It objects alike to secrecy in the trade unions, and in the boards of directors. 'It particularly dis- trusts and dislikes secrecy in any part of the operations of a corporation which deals with public utilities. It not unrea- sonably apprehends that action which must be kept secret will prove to be lawless action. This inevitable apprehension, so often justified by experi- ence, has suggested the real remedy for the violence accom- panying industrial disputes. The remedy has been success- fully put into the form of law in the Canadian Act for the Investigation of Industrial Disputes, an Act which forbids strikes or lockouts prior to an impartial investigation of the causes of the dispute. This beneficent act has now been in operation for twenty-one months, and its success in pre- venting and settling strikes and lockouts without violence and without any arbitration, either voluntary or compulsory, has been remarkable. The Act relies solely on publicity obtained through a tribunal, the appointment of which cither party to a dispute may procure. Lynching is another form of violence which is precisely described by the word "lawless." It argues the absence of an adequate police force, a lack of confidence in the prompt administration of justice by courts, a liability to gregarious rage in the ignorant part of the population, and often the existence of an intense racial antipathy. The barbarous cruelty and the indifference to the risk of killing the inno- cent, which characterize lynching, demonstrate that it^ worst effects are upon the lynchers, except, indeed, in some revolutionary crisis, when all the bonds of society are loos- ened, and laws are silent amid arms. A population which frequently, or habitually, resorts to lynching as the punish- ment of alleged crime, makes public confession that it is a barbarous population, or that its barbarous elements are not controlled by its civilized elements. This demonstrate complete and unanswerable. The causes of the degradation being moral causes, the remedies for it must be the slow- working influences of education, steady productive labor, and a gradually acquired respect for laws, courts, and the protective forces of society. Another illustration of the readiness with which a portion of our people may take to lawless violence has be by the night-riders who lately harried large portions of the States of Kentucky and Tennessee. This seems a form of violence copied from the Ku-Klux-Klan which terrorized the negro population of the south during a bad part of the deplorable "reconstruction" period. The object of the niqlu- riders was to destroy young plantations of tobacco, and prevent the sale of tobacco below a price fixed by an exten- sive organization of tobacco growers, which had been cre- ated to prevent the Tobacco Trust from buying tobacco at a price determined by the Trust. Resistance to an oppre monopoly was at the bottom of the movement ; but the movement availed itself extensively of lawless violence in order to accomplish its objects. It was a case of strong combination fighting strong combination, but by unlaw- ful means. It relied on a widespread opinion that to kill a few people, whip many, burn barns, and scrape 18 newly planted fields, was a trifling evil compared with the selling of tobacco to the Tobacco Trust at a price below what the tobacco growers thought "a living wage." The night-riders have finally won remarkable success. Their tobacco has been sold at a price higher than they ever de- manded during the long period of their lawless operations ,- and on this account the harm they have done to the States in which these outrages took place is all the deeper, and will be the harder to cure. They have exhibited lawlessness unpunished, and triumphant. They have taught all the young people in the counties affected that might makes right, that personal liberty is insecure, that law and order may be defeated with impunity by a disguised mob operat- ing in the darkness, and that in the pursuit of money many men combined may absolutely disregard and trample under foot those rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness which American civilization professes to protect. The worst effect of night-riding, like the worst effect of lynching, is the barbarizing of the men who do the violence. This is always the worst effect of organized and extensive lawlessness, particularly when the lawless work is planned in secret, and executed at night and in disguise. In such dark work there is something peculiarly appalling to the community affected, and peculiarly degrading to the men who take active part in it. Lawlessness in connection with political office and gov- ernment administration is the next phase of this great evil which we ought to consider. The buying of public office is a pernicious form of this lawlessness. Senatorships, col- lectorships, and even judgeships are sometimes paid for out- right, and without disguise, either at the stage of nomina- tion or at that of election, by contributions to party funds or by money payments direct to persons who control the 19 nominations or the elections. Cases have repeatedly occurred in our country in which the notorious purchase of office had apparently no effect on the political or social standing of the purchaser, or, more accurately, in which the purchaser was never sensible of any ill effect on his career. Yet the fundamental principles of republican gov- ernment could hardly be more grossly offended, or more meanly betrayed, than by such conduct. Another form of lawlessness is the use of public salaries to advance personal interests, which was frequently done without shame under the regime of patronage. The maxim "to the victors belong the spoils" is a war maxim and a war practice. In Roman times, in Medieval times, and even in times so recent a^ the capture of the Imperial Palace at Pekin by the Allied Armies, the spoils of war meant something very real and often very valuable. Political spoils have also been \vry real in our country, until civil service reform made head- way enough to limit seriously the spoiler's opportu The whole business of using public places to reward politi- cal service is really as lawless as the looting which a vic- toriou army perpetrates in time of war. particularly in \\ars between a so-called civilized state and a barbarous one. A well-known politician who had had experience in city, state, and national administration once asked me if I 1 what the vice of politicians was. On my professing an un- certainty on that point, he said, "Stealing, just plain steal- ing." When we read about the robbing of cities by their own officials through rake-offs on contracts, commissions on purchases and payrolls, padded payrolls, and bribes for votes against the city's interests, we sometimes feel ; this experienced politician's verdict were absolutely correct. When we read of officers of the law. whose duty it is to repress and punish vice, habitually collecting from the 20 haunts of the worst vices large sums of money paid for protection, we feel as if lawlessness could go no farther, as if we had really reached the bottom of the pit. Surely there is no worse lawlessness in any part of our country than that developed by dishonest governments in great cities. Again, governmental agencies themselves have often fostered lawlessness. Thus states have under-bid other states in offering easy terms of incorporation, in order to reap money from the fees charged for acts of incorporation and charters, and have not stayed their hands because they knew that easier terms of incorporation than neighboring states offered meant opportunities for dishonest men to defraud the community. Executives have complained of court decisions, and have reproached judges for giving decisions contrary to the policies of the executives. Courts have been packed by executive appointments in order to procure subsequently from those same courts decisions in conformity with the wishes or opinions of the executives. Courts themselves have contradicted each other, have given decisions on technical grounds without expressing an opinion on the merits of the case, have divided as evenly as possible on important questions and have brought courts into contempt by long delays, b? reversals of judgment, and by multiplied appeals from court to court. Whenever through any of these causes failures of justice occur, the courts are brought into contempt, and the spirit of lawless- ness is fostered. Society at large must bear the chief responsibility for lawlessness. It neglects to provide the protective forces necessary to secure order and peace. It permits lawless persons to carry on with impunity their operations against 21 the public welfare. It fails to educate the children in rever- ence and obedience, and to inspire them with the love of liberty under law. It declines association with burglars and forgers, but not with dishonest promoters, corrupt offk and lawyers who teach their clients how to evade 1 Under free institutions the law-breaker and the law-evader cannot allege that law and government have cruelly oppressed him, and that they are only wreaking a just ven- geance on society at large. The victims of a despotic government may sometimes have to rebel utterly and ferociously against all law ; but this state of mind is impos- sible in such a republic as ours. We have thus surveyed a series of phases of one great evil which has long manifested itself, and still manifests itself, in our free American society, among the educated and the ignorant, the rich and the poor, the dwellers in cities and the dwellers in the country alike. Some forms of the evil are old and some are new. Some were prevalent in societies much older than ours, some seem to have been invented or rediscovered on this soil. Is then American society improving or deteriorating in respect to reverence for law and obedience to it? No intelligent American who has studied his fellow-countrymen during the past sixty years can hesitate to say, in reply to this question, that American society has greatly improved in this respect, not steadily, but by spasmodic advances, and has made specially large gains during the past twenty years. The means of progress have also been made plain. They are education in home, school, college, and church, the habit of regular industry, the amelioration of industrial strife, the general disuse of alcoholic drinks, resistance to all forms of political corruption, the establishment of pure and efficient govern- ment in city, state, and nation, and the steady inculcation 22 of the ancient precept that righteousness alone exalteth a nation, and of the Christian doctrine that material pros- perity, and public happiness alike may be best promoted by the universal practice of goodwill. Questions and Answers At the close of the address, the questions from the audi- ence and answers by the speaker were as follows: Question. Why should it be considered praiseworthy and patriotic for the Boston Tea Party to destroy other people's private property tea while in our own present day the night-riders are equally lawless and criminal, and when they are analogous to their Boston ancestors in destroying their neighbors private property tobacco? Answer. I was brought up to think that the work of the Boston Tea Party was a patriotic one. Doubtless it was a completely lawless one; but it was a lawlessness that pre- ceded war. It was one of the symptoms that war was com- ing, and it actually did precede war. Surely there is an infinite difference between the object of the Boston Tea Party and the object of the night-riders. In the first place, the Boston Tea Party was not working for any money profit to themselves. (Applause.) They had no tea to sell. (Applause.) The night-riders committed their acts of violence in order that they might succeed in selling their tobacco at a higher price than had been offered them by the Tobacco Trust. I think we all see, ladies and gentlemen, that there is no justice in this comparison. The men who threw the tea into the harbor at Boston would have been very glad to have drunk some of that tea themselves. They were, I say, working for no pecuniary object whatever. What they were resisting was a tax on tea. They had a public object resistance to a taxing power which they deemed to be wholly alien and illegitimate. That was a public object. The night-riders in Kentucky and Tennessee used cruel violence, in order that they might get from the Tobacco Trust, or somebody else, a higher price for the to- 23 bacco they had stored. I believe 1 have an hat ques- tion. Question. Would woman suffrage tend to promote obedi- ence to laws in the United States? That inquiry does not seem to me to be strictly relevant to the discussion of lawlessness. Nevertheless, I will say, briefly, that I do not discern any experiem any part of the world which sheds any light upon the answer to that question. One would have supposed that the addi- tion of multitudes of women to the lists of voters might have some pacifying effect upon political and industrial struggles; but so far as the experience of the world goe-. I confess it does not go far women have taken a very active and violent part in most industrial strife. One hun- dred years ago, when the English unions were beginning their warfare, the women were fully as fierce as the and we know how often that is the case to-day. Ladies and gentlemen, are the Suffragettes lawless? (Appla They broke the windows wn habits, his txxlily habits even. I know that in Ma^-aclin-ett- a large number of laws had to be passed in order to give collective right the control in many instances over individual right. There for the multiplicity of n< ( hir de: crowded communities have been brought together \ denly. and numerous new evils have arisen ; and new result from the effort of society to counteract i which this density of population has created. To meet new evils legislators have many and many a time been obliged to disregard old and highly valued individual right-. instance. \\ e have had in M;. leal of legislation on insect pests, and we have had a deal hit i.n to prevent the spread of tubercn' This legislation is all good ; but in regard to t: it has swept away many highly valued, old individual rij You cannot kill off the brown-tailed moth on the principle that every man is sovereign in his own estate. Far from it. v individual owner must be compelled to clean his inds; else the brown-tailed moth will triumph man and his communities. Any -ingle-minded worm is too- much for man. (Applause.) \Ye used to think in M chusett* that we might -pit wherever we pleased; but that individual right is lo>t forever. There may be too many la\\s proposed r even enacted: but m; that in : instances new laws are absolutely required for the pre-crva- tion and defense of society against new ' for the accommodation of social action to new condition- plan- Question. Hoe- it not seem to you that juvenile law' is markedly on the in America, and if so. what remedies do you propose? Ans'^i'i'. 1 ought to confess at once that I have had little personal observation of this supposed increase of juvenile depravity. The young men with whom I come in contact are somewhat older than the juvenile cl;. liich thi. : .>n refers; but I really do not believe that tin 26 real difference of tendency between the 'students that I see and the younger boys who are going to primary and second- ary schools, except that those boys who go on to the higher education are in some sense picked, or select youth. Juven- ile depravity is supposed by some persons to be the natural outbreak in freedom of a nature depraved by long inherit- ance. On the other hand, I suppose it to be the conse- quence, the natural and inevitable consequence, of the bad conditions under which some boys grow up. It is society's fault, not the boys' fault that they grow up under such con- ditions. I suppose none of us realize how utterly inade- quate the means of education for boys and girls are. I printed, a few years ago, three lectures which I gave one autumn at Teachers' Institutes, and entitled the little book "More Money for the Public Schools." It had a very, very small circulation. Nobody was interested in spending more money on public schools. But yet the expenditure on schools in our country is deplorably small, even in those communities that spend most, like California, for example. In New York City, the average expenditure is high rela- tively to the expenditure of the country at large, but no- where does the expenditure for schooling equal that which must be made in lodging and feeding a child. That is not as it should be. Moreover, we have been extraordinarily ignorant and thoughtless in regard to the means of stopping a criminal career in boys. Judge Lindsay of Denver has opened a campaign of improvement; but that makes but slow progress, when we consider how many millions of boys there are who need to be better controlled and directed. I do not know whether juvenile depravity is on the increase or not. I know there is a great deal too much of it, and that that is the place where the community ought to take hold hard to prevent and uproot evil. (Applause.) It is very little use to deal with adults, except to provide them with regular work, but there is infinite advantage in dealing with the young. Question. Is not the multiplication of laws a proof of weakness in the State? x Answer. The multiplication of laws? I suppose that means the producing of many laws instead of promoting the 27 interests of society by a few laws which lay down threat principles. If we refer to special acts relating to single individuals for instance, to the Pension acts which go through Congress by thousands each pensioning an indi- vidual if we refer to special charters for institutions or corporations instead of to general laws under which any institution or any corporation may be set up as a legal per- son, then the multiplication of laws may perhaps be ex- tmne in our day; but I think the way to avoid those has been made known, and that many American legislatures have taken steps to prevent the multiplication of special acts, and to secure acts covering round, or general uses, in the place of multitudes of special acts. But, as I have already said in reply to another question, if the multi- it ion of acts or laws means that legislators are hoiv trying to provide positive means of righteous action, or are endeavoring to cut out one evil after another by the roots, then we may ea-ily believe that the multiplication of acts, which we see going on, has strong advantages for the modern State. I. of course, do not know to what sort of multiplication of acts this question alludes: but I think the multiplication of acts in itself does not prove weakness in a State. The multiplication of certain kinds of act- pedient : but the multiplication of certain other kinds of acts is highly expedient and beneficial. People complain much that legislatures sit long in these days; but the: often very good reason for the length of sessions A ! lature needs time to examine the multitude of bills prop* and by a long session is enabled to make thorough examina- tion, and to throw out a large number of the bills proposed. It is also able to improve the bills which, in general, it thinks hopeful. Moreover, in these days, there is a reasonable readiness to repeal acts which show themselves to be un- necessary or hurtful : some time must be allowed for that process, which is often a very helpful one. It is my opinion, therefore, that this question cannot be given an explicit and unqualified answer : but I am inclined to deny that the multi- plicity of acts is in itself a demonstration of weakness in the State. CIVIC FORUM ADDRESSES WITH PORTRAITS VOLUME I. SEASON OF 1907-1908 1. PUBLIC OFFICE, The Idea of Public Office HON. CHARLES E. HUGHES, Governor of the State of New York Public Office in delation to Public Opinion HON. DAVID J. BREWER, Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 2. THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN GRAFT AND DEMOCRACY, HON. WILLIAM H. LANGDON, District Attorney for the City and County of San Francisco The Vermin in the Dark Poem by EDWIN MARKHAM, Author of Ibt Man with the Hoe, etc. 3. CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT FOR RUSSIA, PROFESSOR PAUL MILYOUKOV, Member of the Third Duma for St. Petersburg 4. THOU SHALT NOT STEAL, HON. WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN, Lincoln, Nebraska 5. THE ERA OF CONSCIENCE, HON. JOSEPH W. FOLK, Ex-Governor of the State of Missouri 6. PRACTICAL COMMUNISM WORK AND BREAD, DR. FREDERIK VAN EEDEN, A Working Sociologist and the foremost Poet and Author of Holland. 7. THE GROWING SOUTH, DR. EDWIN A. ALDERMAN, President of the University of Virginia 8. THE PEOPLE, THE RAILROADS AND THE NATIONAL AUTHORITY, HON. PHILANDER C. KNOX, Senator from Pennsylvania, and former Attorney-General of the United States 9. DELAYS AND DEFECTS IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF LAW IN THIS COUNTRY, PRESIDENT-ELECT WILLIAM H. TAFT. 10. THE AWAKENING OF CHINA, His EXCELLENCY Wu TING FANG. Minister of China to the United States Price, 10 cents each, postpaid Published by THE Civic FORUM, 23 West 44th Street, New York 7 he SafifutrJi of Dtmotricy art Education mud Public Diuuuio* THE CIVIC FORUM Non- Partisan, Non-Sectarian A NATIONAL PLATFORM FOR THE DISCUSSION OF PUBLIC QUESTIONS AND THE PROMOTION OF INTERNATIONAL GOOD-WILL VICE-PRESIDENTS Judee David J. Brewer, United States Supreme Court Hon. Oscar S. Straus, Secretary of Commerce and Labor. Most Rev. John Ireland, Archbishop of St. Paul Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D., Editor of Tb Outlotk Hon. Nahum J. Bachelder, Ex -Governor of New Hamp MftSter of the Nation*; Farmrrt William Dean Howells, Author John Graham Brooks, Sociologist Hon. William H. Taft, President-Elect of the United States Hon. William Jennings Bryan, Lincoln. Nebraska Rev. Edward Everett Hale, D.D., Chaplain of the United States Senate Right Rev. David H. Greer, D.D. Episcopal Bishop of New York President Samuel Gompers, American Federation of Labor Ex-President John Mitchell, United Mine Workers of Am. < Dr. Albert Shaw, Editor of Tht Rfoiew of Rm'twt BOARD OF TRUSTEES Emerson McMillin, Banker Morgan J. O'Brien, Formerly Judge of the New York State Supreme Court Marcus M. Marks, President National Associations of Clothing Manufacturers Elgin R. L. Gould, President City and Suburban Homes Company Isaac N. Seligman, J. and W. Seligman & Co.. Banker* Henry Clews, Banker Robert J. Collier. Editor Collitr-t Wctkfy Robert Erskine Ely James R. Reynolds, Special CoMlsilBMr for Roosevelt Elgin R. L. Gould, Trtastirer Robert Erskine Ely, Exetutive Director THE Civic FORUM re the most important non-partisan platform in America for public discussion. The scope and influence of THE FORUM are national and international. Its purpose is purely educational. Membership in THE FORUM is open to all. Full particulars will he given on application. THE Civic FORUM, 23 West 44th Street, New York ' ! BRYANT *- ADOIEM ^^Sl****"**~** ]^^ CtroRVM. NEW YOIK - ssssr RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT TO* 202 Main Library LOAN PERIOD 1 HOME USE 3rv 3 4 5 6 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS Renewals and Recharges may be made 4 days prior to the due date. Books may be Renewed by calling 642-3405 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW SENT ON ILL JAN 2 4 1*)7 : FORM NO. DD6 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY BERKELEY, CA 94720