THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: 
 
 AN ADDRKSS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE GRADUATING CLASSES 
 
 SEVENTY-FIRST ANNIVERSARY 
 
 OF 
 
 LAW SCHOOL 
 
 June 34th, 1895, 
 
 HON. HENRY B. BROWN, LL.D. 
 
 OF THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT. 
 
 HOGGSON & ROBINSON, 
 
 PRINTERS TO THE LAW DEPARTMENT OF YALE UNIVERSITY, 
 
 NEW HAVKN, CONN. 
 
 1895.
 
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 ORATION. 
 
 Mr, President and Gentlemen of the Graduating Classes : 
 
 It would be mere affectation in me to deny 
 the pleasure I feel in escaping for a day from the tiresome 
 monotony of judicial labor, and standing once more, a 
 student still, among students, within the precincts of this 
 ancient university. In the wonted aspect of these shaded 
 streets, in the familiar presence of these college buildings 
 and in the comparative repose 9f this beautiful city, I seem 
 to breathe again the air of the cloister, and to recall as if 
 from yesterday a similar gathering of classmates met to- 
 gether for that final parting which marks the beginning 
 of professional life. In the almost two-score years which 
 have elapsed since I last stood before a similar audience 
 here, the thrifty college of less than 700 students has ex- 
 panded into the great university of 2,400, the familiar row 
 of brick, which represented so well the modest architec- 
 tural taste of the eighteenth century, is giving way to the 
 sumptuous structures needed to gratify the aspirations of 
 the nineteenth changes which are only a reproduction 
 upon a smaller scale of the more important changes, which 
 have taken place throughout the world and given to the 
 period which is now drawing to its close, its material and 
 social importance. 
 
 In our retrospective glance at this period let us picture 
 to ourselves the probable subject of a similar address 
 we may imagine to have been delivered a hundred
 
 years ago to the graduating class of the little Law 
 School then recently established at Litchfield which 
 was destined to play so important a part in the educa- 
 tion of the American Bar. The first thought of the 
 speaker would have been to congratulate his hearers upon 
 the termination of the embroilments which had character- 
 ized the short life of the old Confederacy, the adoption of 
 the new Constitution, and the possibilities which a more 
 perfect union of the thirteen original States must have 
 suggested. His hopes would have led him to predict for 
 the newly founded government a great future his appre- 
 hensions would have led him to fear that the storms it had 
 inherited from the original confederacy would wreck it 
 before it was fairly launched, for the soul of John Mar- 
 shall, the great Chief Justice, had not yet entered into the 
 new constitution to give- it vigor, stability and complete- 
 ness. He would probably have inflamed the imaginations 
 of his hearers with the possibilities of the coming century, 
 the redemption and peopling of the western wilderness, 
 the rapid growth of population, the probable accession of 
 new States, the conversion of the Indians (by means as well 
 understood then as now) and the certain expansion of our 
 territory to the Mississippi. Had his imagination been 
 peculiarly fervid, he might even have anticipated the pur- 
 chase or conquest of Louisiana and Florida and the pos- 
 sible extension of our sovereignty to the shores of the 
 Pacific. It might have cooled his ardor, could he have 
 foreseen that the three republics then in existence Swit- 
 zerland, France, then struggling to forget the awful 
 agonies of the Reign of Terror, and his own, would be 
 one hundred years from that day still the sole representa- 
 tives of real republicanism, and that France, after having
 
 been twice a Kingdom and twice an Empire, was still in 
 her experimental stage. But could he have foretold the 
 history of Europe and of Spanish America for the coming 
 century, he would have realized the fact that liberty is 
 not inconsistent with monarchy, nor despotism with a re- 
 public. 
 
 But however brilliant his anticipations of the future 
 might have beefn, he would have utterly failed to grasp 
 the tremendous changes the nineteenth century was to 
 produce, since there was nothing in his past experience 
 to suggest the key-note to those changes in its inventions. 
 Those were the days of the stage-coach, the sailing packet 
 and the mail carrier. There was little in this particular 
 to distinguish the eighteenth century from the five that 
 had preceded it. Gunpowder -and the printing press had 
 done a great work, but they had not affected materially 
 the social life of the people ; and the latest of them was 
 already over three hundred years old. True, the steam 
 engine had been invented and put to the humble use of 
 pumping water, and Franklin had drawn electricity from 
 the clouds ; but the possibilities of steam and electricity as 
 factors in civilization were yet undreamed of. People 
 lived much as they had lived for centuries before, rarely 
 traveling except from necessity, reading a weekly paper 
 or an occasional pamphlet, if at all, and utterly oblivious 
 of the fact that the cotton gin for which Eli Whitney had, 
 three years before, obtained a patent, was but the fore- 
 runner of a series of brilliant inventions which were 
 destined to revolutionize the world, and in comparison 
 witli which all the prior discoveries since the Christian 
 era were of minor importance. 
 
 Unquestionably the foremost of these inventions are
 
 the employment of steam for the purposes of transporta- 
 tion, and of electricity for the transmission of intelligence. 
 Both came into general use during the last decade of the 
 first half of the century. Both have measurably changed 
 the face of nature. Both have profoundly affected the 
 inner life of the people. If we owe to steam the enormous 
 increase in immigration, the rapid settlement of the West 
 and the partial depopulation of the East, the building up 
 of great cities at the expense of the rural districts, the 
 magnitude of modern commerce, the introduction of 
 foreign languages, habits and customs, and finally (let us 
 not despise it too much) the annual vacation in Europe, 
 we are indebted to electricity for all that was needed to 
 supplement the triumph of the railway and the steamship, 
 the instant communication with ever}' part of the world, 
 the prodigious expansion of the daily press, and the rapid 
 and general diffusion of intelligence. These, however, 
 are but the primary effects effects which, though of 
 great importance, it required but little of prophetic wis- 
 dom to forecast. They have been dinned into our ears 
 for half a century every school boy is familiar with them, 
 and perhaps I may even owe you an apology for mention- 
 ing them. 
 
 But these the immediate effects, which are patent to 
 every observer, and which began to manifest themselves 
 as soon as the use of railways and telegraphs became 
 general, are greatly inferior in their economic importance 
 to certain secondary effects, which have become apparent 
 within the past thirty years, and which threaten not only 
 to affect the political future of every State, but to revolu- 
 tionize the entire productive industry of the world. It is 
 a change which began silently, has progressed furtively
 
 but relentlessly, and is yet only at the threshold of its 
 tremendous possibilities. So unforeseen was it, that it 
 may be said to have stolen upon us like a thief in the 
 night. It may be summed up in the single word consoli- 
 dation. Consolidation in politics, in business, in society. 
 Its first manifestation upon a great scale was seen in the 
 Franco-Italian war of 1859 when French railways en- 
 abled Louis Napoleon to mass his troops in the valley of 
 the Po, and with the aid of the Piedmontese to wrest 
 Lombardy from the Austrians, and finally to consolidate 
 the petty principalities of the Latin Peninsula into the 
 new Kingdom of Italy. Steam and electricity were 
 equally potent factors in the suppression of the Re- 
 bellion of 1861, without the aid of which the war might 
 have been indefinitely prolonged. And finally, it was the 
 railways of Germany that enabled William of Prussia to 
 concentrate his armies upon the frontiers of France, and 
 to push to success that brilliant campaign which ended in 
 the capture of Paris, and the founding of the German 
 Empire. This influence is everywhere the same the ab- 
 sorption of small states the creation of large ones the 
 centralization of power in the hands of a few the unifi- 
 cation of people of kindred race and similar language, and, 
 in this country, a vast accession to the power of the Fed- 
 eral Government. Wise men may differ as to whether 
 the liberties of the people can better be preserved in large 
 states or in small ones. History doubtless favors the lat- 
 ter ; but the historical republics had neither steam nor 
 electricity, nor the general diffusion of education and in- 
 telligence they have brought in their train. In producing 
 the evil, (if it be an evil) they have also furnished the 'an- 
 tidote. The nineteenth century has given birth to large
 
 8 
 
 states, but at the same time it has curtailed the privileges 
 of the great, has expanded the area of freedom, and en- 
 trenched the people in their natural rights. But these 
 speculations are of little value. The large states are up- 
 on us and overshadow us. They have come to stay, and 
 for better or for worse, the world must adapt itself to 
 their conditions. 
 
 The consolidating influence of which I have spoken is 
 not less manifest in matters of internal economy ; and is 
 as potent in business as in politics. In fact it may be said 
 to have revolutionized the whole system of production. 
 Where transportation is slow and expensive, each state 
 becomes a manufacturing community of its own; where 
 it is cheap, local manufacturers and dealers are driven to 
 the wall by the competition of the great producers, who 
 manufacture only where it can be done to the best advan- 
 tage. The results are large enterprises, only rendered 
 possible by combinations of capital, great corporations 
 monopolizing the production of all the comforts and many 
 of the necessaries of life, immense farms and pastures 
 flooding the markets of Europe with cheap meats and 
 grain, curtailing the rents of the landlords and depressing 
 the value of their lands, the crushing out of small produ- 
 cers and the centralizing of production where labor and 
 material can be obtained the cheapest. 
 
 We may lament the disappearance of the small em- 
 ployer the man who worked with his hands as well as 
 his brains and was little more than the most skillful of a 
 dozen workmen we may even become pathetic over the 
 loss of the spinning wheel and the loom of our grand- 
 mothers ; but we may find consolation in the thought that 
 the cost of production has been steadily growing less,
 
 9 
 
 that the comforts and even the luxuries of life are within 
 the reach of people, who, a hundred years ago, knew not 
 of them, and that the profits which formerly went to the 
 small producer are now even more widely distributed in 
 the form of dividends to stockholders little rivulets of 
 wealth which trickle through all classes of society, and 
 offer the rewards of thrift to the humblest households in 
 the land. If the head of the great corporation takes to 
 himself an apparently disproportionate share of the pro- 
 fits, it is only in obedience to a universal law that the man 
 who develops extraordinary capacity in any direction re- 
 ceives an extraordinary reward. A lawyer who earns 
 $5,000 a year may in nine cases out of ten, do his work as 
 well as the one who earns $50,000, but in the tenth case, 
 the latter may be worth to his .clients every dollar he costs 
 them. A picture by Meisonnier worth $20,000 may to an 
 unskilled observer be scarcely distinguishable from one 
 worth $200, but there is an impalpable something which 
 to an artistic eye stamps one as the work of a great artist 
 and the other as that of an ordinary painter. While 
 the manager of the corporation may be inferior to a thou- 
 sand of his employees as a mere handler of tools, his talent 
 for organization, oversight and direction, his knowledge 
 of details, his anticipations of the market may make all the 
 difference between success and failure. He is the general 
 of the army, the master of the ship, the Speaker of the 
 House, the Prime Minister of the Cabinet, and his talent 
 for leadership is not to be measured by ordinary stand- 
 ards. The refusal to recognize this ability has been fatal 
 to nearly every scheme for co-operative production. 
 
 I have spoken of the material changes of the nineteenth 
 century as furnishing the key note to the progress of
 
 10 
 
 civilization during that period. But, what is more strictly 
 of personal interest to us, the law, conservative as it is, 
 has not been at a standstill. While its fundamental rules 
 have remained and must always remain the same because 
 they are founded upon immutable principles of justice, 
 legislation has abolished much of what was intended as a 
 wholesome restraint upon individual liberty, and has 
 almost revolutionized the practical administration of the 
 law. It has done away with the ancient tenures of real 
 estate that grew out of the feudal system, and made the 
 transfer of land almost as simple as that of personal 
 property ; it has emancipated the married woman from 
 the chains of coverture, and has not only secured to her, 
 by statute, rights once grudgingly conceded by Courts of 
 Equity, but has made of her a distinct entity from her 
 husband, and armed her with all the weapons necessary 
 for the protection of her natural rights : it has put an end 
 to imprisonment for debt and created a homestead ex- 
 emption : it has swept away in most of the States the 
 ancient forms of actions and approximated pleadings to 
 the models of the civil law : it has opened the door of the 
 witness box to parties and interested witnesses, abolished 
 grand juries in several of the States, simplified indict- 
 ments for murder and restricted the number of capital 
 crimes. The character of litigation has changed as much 
 as the law itself. The lawyer of the last century looked 
 askant at a Court of Equity brought his action at com- 
 mon law and demanded a jury of his peers. He had 
 imbibed the prejudicies of Lord Coke against tribunals 
 proceeding according to the course of the civil law, and 
 thought his chances of success there were measured by 
 the length of the Chancellor's foot. But we have changed
 
 11 
 
 all that. The multiplicity of corporations, the enormous 
 growth of the patent system and of the internal commerce 
 of the country have given rise to questions with which 
 juries are incompetent to deal. The result is that the 
 great litigation of the country is now carried on in Courts 
 of Equity and Admiralty. In some States juries have 
 almost disappeared except in criminal cases and actions 
 for torts, where their well known generosity still finds 
 ample scope in nearly all there is a large proportionate 
 decrease. Forensic eloquence has declined, and the man 
 who can state clearly a complicated series of facts has 
 taken the place of the typical lawyer of the last genera- 
 tion, who could move a jury to tears. Where there is a 
 choice of remedies, the resort is usually to a Court of 
 Equity ; and large interests are treated as safer in the 
 hands of a single, upright, passionless judge, or bench of 
 judges, than in those of the average jury. It is certainly 
 a tribute to the purity of the American judiciary that 
 this confidence is so rarely misplaced, and that their 
 decisions are so seldom the result of fear, favor, affection 
 or the hope of reward. 
 
 I have thus briefly spoken of the changes of the past 
 century to emphasize the point I desire to urge upon 
 your attention, that you are entering the arena of pro- 
 fessional life at a more than usually critically period. 
 Old things are rapidly passing away, and the question 
 presses itself upon us, what will the Twentieth Century 
 furnish to take their place ? The problem whether the 
 Constitution of the United States embodied a feasible 
 plan of government is already settled. Weak spots have 
 undoubtedly been developed some changes seem almost 
 imperative ; but it still remains the most marvellous work
 
 12 
 
 of constructive genius that was ever created. It has 
 grown with each decade in the affection of the people : 
 the danger is, not that it will be changed, but that it will 
 be regarded as too sacred to be changed a product of 
 superhuman wisdom a mere fetish. If the power of 
 the Federal Government has been strengthened, that of 
 the States has not been materially impaired. The country 
 has survived the shock of a great war. The loyalty of 
 the South is unquestioned, and there has never been a 
 time when strife between different sections seemed less 
 probable than at present. 
 
 The man who should assume to prophecy what the 
 Twentieth Century will bring forth is likely to be as far 
 astray as the hypothetical speaker I mentioned, who 
 failed to take account of the inventions of the nineteenth. 
 At the same time, speculations based upon an existing 
 state of things are not wholly useless. If they fail to 
 anticipate every contingency they may at least provide 
 for some. If they are an uncertain guide for our future 
 action they may serve to point out to us our immediate 
 duty. There are certain rules of human conduct which 
 are obligatory at all times and under all circumstances. 
 Of these are integrity, morality and industry. Let us 
 hope the time may never come when they will fail to 
 receive their reward. 
 
 It is one of the ancient maxims of the law that a state 
 of things once proven to exist is presumed to continue. 
 So we may safely assume that the tendencies, which the 
 last half of the nineteenth century has developed, will be 
 prolonged into the twentieth, that the great powers of 
 Europe, which have already parcelled out among them- 
 selves almost the entire continent of Africa, will look for
 
 13 
 
 new fields of conquest in the extreme East; that the 
 process of absorption will go on with the usual indiffer- 
 ence to the wishes of the native populations, and that 
 another hundred years may see the entire Eastern 
 hemisphere under their control. It will be your duty to 
 see that their rapacity does not extend to the Western. 
 The lust of conquest, like that of acquisition, knows no 
 bounds. 
 
 In the domain proper of the law, the reforms have 
 already been so sweeping- that the future seems to promise 
 more of conservation than of change. Justice is the same 
 at all times, and if laws are framed upon principles of 
 exact justice and equal rights to all, and are conformable 
 to the habits and traditions of the people, changes will be 
 limited to the meeting of new exigencies as they arise. I 
 look, however, to a greatly increased efficiency in the 
 administration of the law which, in many of the States, is 
 most unsatisfactory. The very fact that lynchings out- 
 number the legal executions is strong evidence of a feeble 
 enforcement of the criminal statutes. The fact that such 
 lynchings are most frequent in States where the accused 
 is most perfectly protected by statutory guaranties, 
 indicates a popular opinion that such guaranties are made 
 use of to defeat justice and not to secure it. Let the 
 people, who are, in the main, law abiding, or at least 
 determined that others shall be so, once become satisfied 
 that the law is being used to set the guilty free, and 
 irregular methods of wreaking vengeance are inevitable. 
 A rigorous enforcement of the law is therefore as neces- 
 sary for the protection of the innocent as to the punish- 
 ment of the guilty. I look for the time when the techni- 
 calities which hedge about the administration of criminal
 
 14 
 
 law and seem as precious to the lawyers of the present 
 century as the rules of special pleading did to those of 
 the last, will be swept away and every case be squarely 
 settled upon its merits. I look for the spread of codifica- 
 tion, for the abolition of grand juries, and of the rule of 
 unanimity, at least in civil cases, for a reduction in the 
 time consumed, and the enormous expense to taxpayers 
 of jury trials, and for a greatly simplified system of regis- 
 tration of deeds. If we had more independent judges 
 who would conduct trials instead of listening to them, 
 and more intelligent juries, there would be less complaint 
 of the mal-administration of justice. 
 
 The important changes of the Twentieth Century, how- 
 ever, promise to be social rather than legal or political, 
 and as I have entire confidence that in a free country the 
 lawyers will always be leaders of public opinion, and that 
 the American Bar especially will maintain its supremacy 
 in the halls of legislation, it is to you as a component part 
 of social state of the future, that I address myself. While 
 the signs of the material development and prosperity of 
 the country were never more auspicious than at present, 
 it is not to be denied that the tendencies of the past thirty 
 years, to which I have already called attention, have pro- 
 duced a state of social unrest which augurs ill for its fu- 
 ture tranquility. The processes of combination have 
 resulted not only in putting practically the entire manu- 
 facturing industry of the country into the hands of cor- 
 porations, but have enabled the latter to put an end to 
 competition among themselves by the creation of trusts, 
 to monopolize the production of a particular article. It is 
 doubtful if, even during the reign of Elizabeth and James, 
 when grants of monopolies by the Crown, became the ob-
 
 15 
 
 ject of such public outcry that a statute was passed to 
 suppress them, monopolies have ever fastened themselves 
 upon the necessaries of life to the extent they have done 
 within the past twenty years and that, too, in a country 
 where manufactures and trade are absolutely free and un- 
 restricted. 
 
 Upon the other hand, labor, taking its cue from capital, 
 though more slowly, because less intelligent and alert to 
 its own interests, is gradually consolidating its various 
 Trade Unions with the avowed object of dictating the 
 terms upon which the productive and transportation in- 
 dustry of the country shall be carried on. The ancient 
 war between capital and labor which has been waged with 
 more or less bitterness since the day when capitalists and 
 laborers began to constitute distinct classes, bids fair to 
 array their respective armies in two hostile camps to do 
 battle for the command of the productive forces of the 
 country. The reconciliation of this strife, if reconciliation 
 be possible, is the great social problem which will con- 
 front you, as you enter upon the stage of professional 
 life. 
 
 That the solution of this does not lie in the destruction 
 of private property is as certain as that the civilized world 
 will not return to barbarism. National socialism has 
 never been found except among primitive types of people, 
 and the history of civilization for the past four thousand 
 years has been largely the history of individuals who have 
 sought to acquire property for themselves, and to protect 
 it from the rapacity of their neighbors. The fruits of this 
 long struggle are not going to be abandoned at the behest 
 of a few theorists, however honest, who imagine they see 
 in the abolition of property a panacea for all the evils
 
 16 
 
 which the acquisition ot such property entails. Under 
 our present social system, with all its faults, the civilized 
 world is constantly growing richer, freer, more prosper- 
 ous the richer, less ostentatious in the display of their 
 wealth the poorer, better housed, better clad and better 
 fed than ever before. Certainly, the burden is upon them 
 who contend that this civilization is a failure. Nothing can 
 demonstrate the soundness of their principles so well as 
 a practical test of socialism upon a large scale. If 
 a successful experiment of that kind could be offered to 
 the world, they might have some title to contend that civili- 
 zation should be reorganized upon that model. It must 
 be confessed, however, that the efforts heretofore made 
 in that direction have rarely met the expectations of their 
 founders. 
 
 The truth is that distinctions in wealth within reason- 
 able limits, so far from being objectionable, are a 
 positive blessing, even to the poor, in the opportunity 
 they afford for a diversity of labor and of talents. The 
 census of 1890 shows that if the entire property of the 
 country were equally divided, each inhabitant would have 
 $1,036. Imagine such division to be made, and by some 
 legal magic to become permanent, every one with the ne- 
 cessaries of life, but with few of its comforts, and none of 
 its luxuries. With no reward for industry and no punish- 
 ment for idleness, what would be the proportion of the 
 industrious to the idle? Where would be the incentive 
 to labor? What would become of the hundreds of thou- 
 sands who are engaged in providing luxuries for the rich, 
 and in ministering to their pleasures? What of the archi- 
 tects, the painters, the sculptors, the manufacturers of car- 
 riages, pianos, jewelry, and the thousand and one articles 
 of this description, were the demands for them suddenly
 
 17 
 
 to cease? The truth is, the whole fabric of civilization is 
 built upon the sanctity of private property. Were this 
 foundation to be taken away, the structure would crumble 
 into ruins. 
 
 While it is entirely true that the business methods of 
 the past thirty years have tended to increase enormously 
 the fortunes of a few, and thus to widen the gulf between 
 the very rich and the very poor, it is wholly untrue that 
 the poor as a class are either absolutely or relatively 
 poorer than before. Indeed the number of small but com- 
 fortable homes in every part of the country as well as the 
 reports of savings banks, building associations and insur- 
 ance companies prove incontestably that the poor have 
 shared in the prosperity of the rich, and that the average 
 standard of comfort was never higher than at present. 
 The average working-man of to-day lives better, and pos- 
 sesses more of the comforts of life than the average noble 
 of six hundred years ago. The sins of wealth, though 
 many and grievous, have not generally been aimed directly 
 at the oppression of the poor. 
 
 While I feel assured that the social disquietude of 
 which I have spoken does not point to the destruction of 
 private property, it is not improbable that it will result in 
 the gradual enlargement of the functions of government, 
 and the ultimate control of natural monopolies. If the 
 government may be safely entrusted with the transmis- 
 sion of our letters and papers, I see no reason why it may 
 not also of our telegrams and parcels, as is almost uni- 
 versally the case in Europe, or of our passengers and 
 freight, through a State ownership of railways, as in Ger- 
 many, France, Austria and Norway ? If the State owns its 
 highways, why may it not also own its railways? If a
 
 18 
 
 municipality owns its streets, and keeps them paved, sew- 
 ered and cleansed, why may it not also light them, water 
 them and transport its citizens over them so far as such 
 transportation involves a monoply of their use? Indeed 
 wherever the proposed business is of a public or semi- 
 public character, and requires special privileges of the 
 State or a partial delegation of governmental powers, such 
 for instance as the condemnation of land, or a special use 
 or disturbance of the public streets for the laying of rails, 
 pipes or wires, there would seem to be no sound reason 
 why such franchises, which are for the supposed benefit 
 of the public, should not be exercised directly by the pub- 
 lic. Such, at least, is the tendency in modern legislation in 
 nearly every highly civilized state but our own, where 
 great corporate interests by putting forward the dangers 
 of paternalism and socialism, have succeeded in securing 
 franchises which properly belong to the public. The fear, 
 too, that these monopolies may be used for political pur- 
 poses has hitherto proved an insuperable objection to 
 their exercise by the State ; but the development of Civil 
 Service Reform has of late been so rapid and satisfactory 
 that its introduction into this new field of usefulness 
 would follow as a matter of course, and would obviate the 
 most formidable difficulty in the way of the proposed 
 change. Should the assumption of these natural monopo- 
 lies by foreign States and municipalities prove as success- 
 ful as they now promise, the question which will confront 
 the legislatures of the Twentieth Century will be, not 
 whether these extensions of governmental functions are 
 socialistic in their tendencies, but how long this country 
 can afford to lag behind others which we have been taught 
 to look upon as conservative and inert. Progress in this
 
 19 
 
 direction should undoubtedly be made with great caution, 
 and each step should be taken in the assurance that the 
 last one has already been vindicated by the result. 
 
 While I have no doubt of the ultimate settlement of our 
 social problems upon a reasonable and judicious basis, 
 there are undoubtedly certain perils which menace the 
 immediate future of the country, and even threaten the 
 stability of its institutions. The most prominent of the,se 
 are municipal misgovernment, corporate greed and the tyranny 
 of labor. The dangers which, a hundred years ago, threat- 
 ened the very existence of the new constitution have all 
 happily passed away ; but these, which were then unsus- 
 pected, have risen to take their place. 
 
 Municipal misgovernment has come upon us with uni- 
 versal suffrage and the growth of large cities and in 
 general seems to flourish in a ratio proportioned to 
 the size of the city. Why a system of government 
 which, upon the whole, works well in small towns, and 
 even in States of considerable size, should break down so 
 completely when applied to large cities may seem strange 
 at first, but after all it is not difficult of solution. The 
 activities of urban life are so intense, the pursuit of 
 wealth or pleasure so absorbing, as, upon the one hand, to 
 breed an indifference to public affairs ; and upon the 
 other, the expenditures are so large, the value of the 
 franchises at the disposal of the cities so great, and the 
 opportunities for illicit gain so manifold, that the muni- 
 cipal legislators, whose standard of honesty is rarely 
 higher than the average of those who elect them, fall an 
 easy prey to the designing and unscrupulous. Franchises 
 which ought to net the Treasury a large sum are bartered 
 away for a song, privileges which ought to be freely
 
 20 
 
 granted in the interest of the public are withheld, till 
 those who are supposed to be immediately benefited 
 will consent to pay for them, gross favoritism is shown in 
 the assessment of property for taxation, great corpora- 
 tions are permitted to encumber the streets and endanger 
 the lives of citizens, while every form of vice which can 
 be made to pay for the privilege, is secretly tolerated. 
 The consequences of all this is thus depicted by a recent 
 English writer who has made a study of our municipal 
 institutions: "I have watched the rapid evolution of 
 Social Democracy in England. I have studied Autocracy 
 in Russia and Theocracy in Rome, and I must say that 
 no where, not even in Russia, in the first years of the 
 reaction occasioned by the murder of the late Czar, have 
 I struck more abject submission to a more soulless 
 despotism than that which prevails among the masses of 
 the so-called free American citizens, when they are face 
 to face with the omnipotent power of the corporations." 
 
 Granting this to be overdrawn, for I am unwilling to 
 believe that corporations are solely responsible for our 
 municipal misgovernment, the fact remains that bribery 
 and corruption are so general as to threaten the very 
 structure of society. Indeed, we are being slowly driven 
 to the conclusion that the best governed city in the 
 country, I had almost said the only well governed large 
 city, is administered upon principles which amount to a 
 complete negation of the whole democratic system. 
 Universal suffrage, which it was confidently supposed 
 would enure to the benefit of the poor man, is so skillfully 
 manipulated as to rivet his chains, and to secure to the 
 rich one a predominance in politics he had never enjoyed 
 under a restricted system. Probably in no country in the
 
 21 
 
 world is the influence of wealth more potent than in this, 
 and in no period of our history has it been more master- 
 ful than now. So far as such influence is based upon 
 superior intelligence, and is exerted for the public good, 
 it is doubtless legitimate so far as it is used to secure to 
 wealth exceptional privileges, to trample upon the rights 
 of the public, to stifle free discussion or to purchase 
 public opinion by a subsidy of the press, it invites meas- 
 ures of retaliation which can scarcely fail to be disastrous. 
 Mobs are never logical, and are prone to seize upon 
 pretexts rather than upon reasons, to wreak their ven- 
 geance upon whole classes of society. There was probably 
 never a flimsier excuse for a great riot than the sympa- 
 thetic strike of last summer, but back of it were substantial 
 grievances to which the conscience of the city seems to 
 have finally awakened. If wealth will not respect the 
 rules of common honesty in the use of its power, it will 
 have no reason to expect moderation or discretion on the 
 part of those who resist its encroachments. 
 
 The misgovernment of which I have spoken is so noto- 
 rious and so nearly universal, that it is useless to attempt 
 to ignore it, or expect that it will cure itself. Whether 
 the blame lies chiefly upon him who gives, or upon him 
 who receives a bribe, it is evident the temptation must be 
 removed, either by destroying the inducement, or by ele- 
 vating the character of those who are charged with the 
 administration of the government. The fault is not that 
 of one class alone. If the higher classes evade their just 
 responsibilities, the lower will not fail to profit by their 
 example. If the rich are seen to escape taxation by 
 bribing assessors or by fraudulent removals from the city, 
 the poor will not hesitate to avenge themselves in the
 
 22 
 
 coarser way of accepting bribes. Whether the remedy 
 for all this lies in raising the character of the electorate, 
 by limiting municipal suffrage to property holders, or in 
 government by commissions, is a question which will not 
 fail to demand your attentive consideration. The great, 
 the unanswerable argument in favor of universal suffrage 
 is, not that it ensures a better or purer government, but 
 that all must be contented with a government in which all 
 have an equal voice. If it be deficient in this particular, 
 if it fail to secure the poor against the oppression of the 
 rich, or the rich against a destruction of their property by 
 the poor, in short, if the representatives of the people 
 betray their trusts, it is pro tanto a failure, and another 
 method of representation should be adopted. If we can- 
 not have government by the whole people, let us have 
 government by the better classes and not by the worst. 
 
 I have spoken of corporate greed as another source of 
 peril to the State. Corporations are a necessity in every 
 civilized state. Great enterprises cannot be carried on 
 without the aggregation of capital and the limitation of 
 liability, which distinguish them from ordinary partner- 
 ships. They have a practical monopoly of land transpor- 
 tation, of mining, manufacturing, banking and insurance ; 
 and within their proper sphere they are a blessing to the 
 community. On the other hand, the ease with which 
 charters are procured has produced great abuses. Cor- 
 porations are formed for trading or other analogous pur- 
 poses, with the design of crushing out rival dealers 
 often with a view, not of collecting together capital, but 
 of avoiding personal liability, and under a name suggest- 
 ing an individual rather than a corporate enterprise. 
 Thus Mr. John Smith, who has made and laid away a
 
 23 
 
 comfortable fortune in a corner grocery, seeing disaster 
 ahead, procures himself to be incorporated with a small 
 capital under the name of John Smith, and when called 
 upon by his creditors, assures them that their contracts 
 were not made with Smith as an individual, but with 
 Smith as a corporation, and that his liability is limited by 
 his stock in trade. Corporations are formed under the 
 laws of one State for the sole purpose of doing business in 
 another, and railways are built in California under chart- 
 ers granted by States east of the Mississippi, for the pur- 
 pose of removing their litigation to Federal Courts. 
 
 The grossest frauds are perpetrated in the construction 
 of such roads, which are built not by the corporation own- 
 ing them, for the best price that can be obtained, but by 
 the directors themselves under guise of a construction 
 company, another corporation, to which is turned over 
 all the bonds, mortgages and other securities, regardless 
 of the actual cost of the road. The road is equipped in 
 the same way by another corporation, formed of the di- 
 rectors, which buys the rolling stock and leases it to the 
 road so that when the inevitable foreclosure comes, the 
 stockholders are found to have been defrauded for the 
 benefit of the mortgagees, and the mortgagees defrauded 
 for the benefit of the directors. Indeed the process of re- 
 organizing, or as it is popularly and often properly known 
 as " wrecking " corporations in the interest of the directors, 
 has become an exceedingly profitable, if not a very repu- 
 table, industry. Property thus acquired in defiance of 
 honesty and morality does not stand in a favorable posi- 
 tion to invoke the aid of the law for its protection. 
 
 Worse than this, however, is the combination of corpo- 
 rations in so-called trusts, to limit production, stifle com-
 
 24 
 
 petition and monopolize the necessaries of life. The ex- 
 tent to which this has already been carried is alarming, 
 the extent to which it may hereafter be carried is revolu- 
 tionary. Indeed the evils of aggregated wealth are no 
 where seen in more odious form. If no student can light 
 his lamp without paying tribute to one company, if no 
 house-keeper can buy a pound of meat or sugar without 
 swelling the receipts of two or three all-pervading trusts, 
 what is to prevent the entire productive industry of the 
 country becoming ultimately absorbed by a hundred gi- 
 gantic corporations? If a railway company originally 
 organized to build a hundred miles of road, has by fifty 
 years of consolidations and leases, become the undisputed 
 master of ten thousand miles of transportation, what is to 
 prevent it, in another fifty years, from monopolizing half 
 the traffic of the continent? 
 
 Upon the other hand, railways themselves are not with- 
 out their grievances. In more than one State they have 
 been treated as if they were the lawful prey of the legis- 
 lature, and so borne down by oppressive and discriminat- 
 ing taxation, and by suits for personal injuries, that they 
 are fain to take refuge in that haven of distress for weari- 
 ed corporations a receivership. The truth is that the 
 entire corporate legislation of the country is sadly in need 
 of overhauling, but the difficulty of procuring concurrent 
 action on the part of forty -four States is apparently in- 
 superable. They should never be formed except for ob- 
 jects requiring large amounts of capital, and should be 
 absolutely prohibited for farming or trading purposes, 
 and particularly for traficking in the necessaries of life. 
 Their capital should be no larger than required for the 
 object to be attained, and their life should be strictly lim-
 
 25 
 
 ited in point of time, that they may be wound up at stated 
 periods. Most important of all, these laws should be rig- 
 idly enforced, and not left to the hap-hazard of attorneys 
 elected every two years by popular suffrage. 
 
 From a wholly different quarter proceeds the third and 
 most immediate peril to which I have called your atten- 
 tion the tyranny of labor. It arises from the apparent 
 inability of the laboring man to perceive that the rights 
 he exacts, he must also concede. If, for instance, an em- 
 ployer of labor should discharge an employee, or refuse 
 to hire him because of a difference between them as to 
 wages, and should then forbid him from obtaining em- 
 ployment elsewhere, and should assault the person and 
 burn the property of any one who proposed to give him 
 work, he would naturally be considered a fit subject for 
 mental treatment ; yet a year never passes that outrages 
 of this description are not perpetrated under the name of 
 the rights of labor. Men are harried, assaulted and stoned, 
 simply because they are willing to work for less than their 
 assailants, while property is burned, public travel arrest- 
 ed and large cities reduced to hunger, that great corpora- 
 tions may be compelled to employ workmen at wages 
 fixed by themselves. This, too, in a nominally free coun- 
 try. 
 
 It needs no argument to show that such conditions are 
 intolerable. The truth is that labor, like every other mar- 
 ketable commodity, will command such wages as capital 
 is able to pay, and if laborers themselves do not become 
 capitalists by purchasing stock in their own corporations, 
 and thus becoming profit-sharers, or laying aside their sur- 
 plus earnings in savings banks or elsewhere, it is because 
 they lack the qualities of industry and thrift out of which
 
 26 
 
 capitalists are made. While certain enterprises do un- 
 doubtedly return large profits, capital as a rule does not, 
 or the country would not be strewn with the wrecks of so 
 many enterprises. Laboring men may defy the laws of 
 the land and pull down their own houses and those of 
 their employers about their heads, but they are powerless 
 to control the laws of nature that great law of supply 
 and demand, in obedience to which industries rise, flourish 
 for a season and decay, and both capital and labor receive 
 their appropriate reward. 
 
 The outlook for a permanent peace between capital and 
 labor is certainly not an encouraging one. The conflict 
 between them has been going on and increasing in bitter- 
 ness for thousands of years, and a settlement seems farther 
 off than ever. Strikes are rarely successful strikes ac- 
 companied by violence almost never since violence en- 
 genders exasperation which always redounds to the bene- 
 fit of the stronger party. When the Israelites went off 
 upon their grand national strike, the first strike recorded 
 in history, they are said to have despoiled the Egyptians ; 
 but the latter, so far from being won over by this argu- 
 ment, sent an army to pursue them across the Red Sea. 
 On the other hand, when the Roman Commons, driven 
 to despair by the oppression of the patrician class, with- 
 drew peaceably to the Sacred Hill, the latter were quickly 
 brought to terms, and conceded practically all they 
 demanded. 
 
 Arbitration is thought by some to promise a solution 
 of all these problems, and where a dispute turns simply 
 upon the rate of wages, it may often be a convenient method 
 of adjustment. Yet its function is after all merely advis-
 
 27 
 
 cry. It cannot compel an employer to operate his estab- 
 lishment at a loss it cannot compel employees to work 
 for less wages than they may choose to demand. If it 
 could, it would re-establish slavery under the name of an 
 award. The whole theory of arbitration presupposes 
 voluntary action a voluntary submission of something 
 in dispute a voluntary performance of an award. Com- 
 pulsory arbitration is a misnomer a contradiction in 
 terms. One might as well speak of an amicable murder 
 or a friendly war. There are certain things, too, which 
 cannot be arbitrated. Suppose a Labor Union should as- 
 sume to dictate who should be employed and upon what 
 terms, of whom material should be purchased, and to 
 whom sales should be made. This involves no more nor 
 less than the control of one's business, the surrender of 
 which could not be made without the certainty of ultimate 
 bankruptcy. 
 
 It is possible that a compromise may finally be effected 
 upon the basis of co-operation or profit-sharing, under 
 which every laborer shall become to a certain extent a 
 capitalist. The difficulty of securing a competent man- 
 ager at a salary which the workmen are willing to pay, 
 and the necessities of the employees themselves, have 
 heretofore proved an insuperable obstacle to co-operation 
 in production. The faculty of accumulation is compara- 
 tively a rare one, and without it, there will be no provi- 
 sion for unprofitable seasons, in which the capitalist is 
 forced to depend upon his accumulated store. In a few 
 instances the necessities of a large family require the ex- 
 penditure of all the earnings of a laboring man, but in a 
 majority of cases the thrift that lies at the bottom of every 
 large fortune is lacking, and men prefer the certainty of a
 
 28 
 
 weekly stipend to the possibility of great profits. Per- 
 haps with superior education, wider experience and larger 
 intelligence, the laboring man of the Twentieth Century 
 may attain the summit of his ambition in his ability to 
 command the entire profits of his toil. 
 
 I have spoken to you thus briefly but frankly upon the 
 dangers which seem to me to environ the future of the 
 country, not because I believe them to be insuperable, 
 but because I desire to press upon your attention the fact 
 that upon you, as representing the legal intelligence of 
 the country, will be laid the burden of averting them, and 
 of preserving intact the liberties of the people. One of 
 these, that of municipal corruption, is peculiar to this 
 country, the others are those in which the whole civilized 
 world may be said to have its share. Some of them are 
 the inevitable fruits of that process of consolidation upon 
 which I have dwelt so largely ; some of them have come 
 upon us from an indifference to political responsibilities, 
 and a good natured endurance of evils which are not intol- 
 erable. In fact, patience under affliction is a leading 
 defect in the American character. I fear there is no 
 counterpart in this country to the sturdy London butcher, 
 who carried on for years a costly litigation against the 
 British Crown, to secure the privilege of walking through 
 Richmond Park. Instead of applying the rule " obsta 
 principals" we are rather given to submitting with easy 
 acquiescence to encroachments upon our natural rights, 
 until further toleration becomes impossible, when we 
 reverse the old maxim, and declare that what cannot be 
 endured must be cured. 
 
 Fifty years ago, it might have been said of this country, 
 as a recent writer has said of the Dutch who represent
 
 29 
 
 even more perfectly than the Swiss, the ideal of thrift 
 with a Republican simplicity and contentment, " in Hol- 
 land are to be found riches without ostentation, freedom 
 without insolence, taxes without poverty. The country 
 goes on its way without panics, without insurrections, 
 preserving, with its fundamental good sense, in its tradi- 
 tions, customs and freedom, the imprint of its noble 
 origin." In the vigor of our youth, the rapidity of our 
 growth and the exuberance of our wealth, we have 
 already passed this stage, and are brought face to face 
 with the problem, how far great inequalities of condition 
 are consistent with the maintenance of a perfect equality 
 of rights. There never has been a time in the history of 
 the country when men of independent thought men who 
 can neither be awed by the mastery of wealth nor seduced 
 by the blandishments of popularity, were more urgently 
 needed to guide the ship of State with a steady hand. 
 Whatever the coming century may produce, I am 
 satisfied its material prosperity will suffer no important 
 check. Financial panics will doubtless recur every 
 twentieth year with the regularity of a planetary revolu- 
 tion, to be followed by a cry for cheap money as inevita- 
 ble as fever follows a malarial chill a cry quite certain 
 to be drowned in the first wave of returning prosperity ; 
 but the country as a whole will grow richer, stronger, 
 better. Progress will be made, but upon lines already 
 drawn, for nothing is surer than that sudden or radical 
 changes will not be permanent. 
 
 In dealing with the evils which threaten our future 
 tranquility you ought to find and doubtless will find an 
 efficient coadjutor in a Free Press. Indeed the Bar and 
 the Press are the great safeguards of liberty. When we
 
 30 
 
 consider what the Press has shown itself capable of doing 
 how, within the memory of the present generation, a trio 
 of corrupt judges was driven from the bench by the 
 relentless pursuit of a single daily paper, how, by another, 
 the practical autocrat of a neighboring city was forced 
 into exile and imprisonment, how, in a dozen instances, 
 depraved creatures of political methods have been ousted 
 from the control of great municipalities, we are able to 
 appreciate the great power of the daily newspapers for 
 good or evil. Their peculiarities may entertain us. We 
 may smile at their claims to infallibility and omniscence, 
 we may amuse ourselves at their smug satisfaction with 
 their own greatness, we may even question their definition 
 of enterprise so far as it consists in prying into domestic 
 and official secrets, but of their influence upon public 
 opinion, there is so little doubt, that we are led to regret 
 that it is not oftener exerted in the right direction. Their 
 utterances are so generally moulded in their own in- 
 terests, or in those of their immediate patrons, that we 
 are compelled to look upon them rather as arguments of 
 astute counsel than as the deliverances of an unprejudiced 
 Court. But even if they are not to be taken seriously, if 
 they are too willing to sacrifice everything to a reputation 
 for " smartness," if their opinions are too often unsafe 
 guides, there is nothing better calculated to demonstrate 
 the unsoundness of such opinions than the free publication 
 of them. Liberty cannot exist where the Press is not 
 free to comment upon public questions, nor can private 
 character be safe, if the law cannot protect it against its 
 assaults. But, with all their faults, newspapers are 
 indispensable, and life would lose half its charm without 
 our morning journal. Let it be said to their credit that,
 
 31 
 
 in times of great popular outcry against abuses, their 
 voice is generally upon the side of reform. 
 
 It has been given to the Nineteenth Century to teach 
 the world how a great republic can be founded upon prin- 
 ciples of justice and equality : it will be the duty of the 
 Twentieth to show how it can be preserved against the in- 
 sidious encroachments of wealth, as well as the assaults of 
 the mob. It will be your privilege to demonstrate that 
 great States are as compatible with free institutions as 
 small ones, and your duty to testify to your wish that this 
 shall be the best as well as the greatest of governments, 
 by taking an active interest in its administration, and bear- 
 ing your share of its burdens. The progess of all civiliza- 
 tion has 'been from the reign of will to the reign of law, 
 and, as a rule, that government is freest whose Courts of 
 Justice are purest. Freedom and injustice are ill-mated 
 companions ; and at the basis of every free government is 
 the ability of the citizen to apply to the courts for a re- 
 dress of his grievances, and the assurance that he will 
 there receive what justice demands. So long as we can 
 preserve the purity of our courts we need never despair 
 of the Republic. Of justice it was eloquently said by 
 Sidney Smith : " Truth is its handmaid, freedom is its 
 child, peace is its companion, safety walks in its steps, vic- 
 tory follows in its train ; it is the brightest emanation 
 from the gospel, it is the attribute of God."