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tain their appetite for legal warfare, there is yet a long campaign which may be waged, involving often one or more retrials of the case. They are not likely quite to reach the record of a French

court which just rendered a final judgment in a land case said to have been of five hundred and ninety-nine years' duration; although they may not appreciate this fact at the time.

TH

HE Conclusion of Mr. A and of other worthy citizens from this sort of an experience is undoubtedly that the whole machinery is so inefficient, so slow, and laborious in its operation that it should be abolished altogether. "Away with all the red tape. Let us throw overboard these rules which do not aid justice but delay and confuse us." Such has always been the cry of the reformer.

To a student of legal history such a platform seems naïve. A certain amount of red tape is a natural concomitant of any attempt at orderly procedure. From time to time in the history of our jurisprudence we have tried to do away with the red tape of procedural rules and have established courts so simple that any layman might enter them without fear. Then the reforming courts themselves become subject to rules and oftentimes become worse affected than were the original courts. A striking instance of this kind is found in the development of the courts of equity. The first court of equity was simply the king's chancellor, who in the name of the king acted to right wrongs where the ordinary courts of justice would not interfere. The procedure by which application was made to the conscience of the king became hedged about with rules so that by the time of Dickens the delays in the court of chancery were more striking than in the law courts themselves. Furthermore, there was now the added difficulty that there were two different systems of courts, each with a hard-and

fast procedure, and the litigant might, after working through the red tape, eventually find that he was in the wrong court. Present-day reformers might well bear in mind the experience of this kind, and that the establishment of tribunals with simple and efficient forms of remedies may lead eventually to a multiplicity of courts, with strict procedure in each one and with the litigant confused as to the proper court to approach.

The trend of modern reform seems to have been to seek non-judicial tribunals to take the place of the courts. The growth of administrative commissions has been a striking feature of recent legal history. Public utility, inter-State commerce and railroad commissions, workmen's compensation tribunals, trade

commissions, and other similar bodies are all established in considerable part to do away with the red tape of the ordinary court of justice. It is probable that these up to date have done a highly noteworthy service, but with the growth of the precedents of each body and of a definite procedure as to each one, we may well find that we have reached the limits of advantageous development of this movement.

Perhaps similar suggestion may be made as to the most modern movement, that to stimulate the employment of the device of commercial arbitration. Under this the parties to a contract stipulate that differences between them arising in connection with the contract shall be determined by one or more lay arbitrators chosen as the contract may provide. In the past the courts unwisely took a hostile view of any attempts to oust them of jurisdiction, as they put it, but, stimulated by statutes and societies such as the Commercial Arbitration Society, the device is now becoming increasingly popular. In view of the crowded condition of court dockets, and of the advantage in certain specialized contracts of having the judgment of technical lay experts, the success of the movement is not surprising. But with success comes orderly procedure, and with that comes red tape. It is interesting to note that one of our authorities on the subject has recently commented upon the more technical character of the applicable rules in England, and gives as a reason therefor the longer period during which arbitration has been employed in that country as a practical juridical instrument. A court turns out to be a court, no matter what we call it, and we should hesitate somewhat in our present rash policy of multiplying forms of courts. forming spirit may well be directed to the courts themselves, their organization, and their procedure.

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The re

I would then seem that we should

proceed on these postulates, that we must have formal procedural rules in formal judicial tribunals, that these rules will from their very nature tend to become fossilized and unworkable, and that therefore some measure of constant revivification of court procedure must be devised. How is this to be done? How shall the judicial procedural tools be kept in a proper state of efficiency? The unfortunate attempts of the past may admonish us not to be over-sanguine. Possibly it is an insoluble problem. Certain things at least may be done. One of the most important is a real study of the court system as a governmental institution functioning in modern life.

Now the reaction to this suggestion

may be the immediate question, What are the law schools and bench and bar doing now but just that? The answer is that in the main emphasis is now placed upon the study of substantive rules of law, while the means to be used to make such substantive law effective have been comparatively little considered. When studied at all, they have been viewed as trade tools, leading to professional success at the bar; when contemplated by students of society, they have been considered with manifest impatience and with the conclusion that the enactment of a variety of incidental reforms will solve the whole difficult problem. What is first needed is a careful and extended comparative study of existing legal systems and procedures.

The very diversity of procedure in the various States is not wholly a loss, for it means that there is so much more opportunity for experimentation and for testing of the results of reform. There are in this country alone some fortyeight or more laboratories for this kind of investigation. When to this are added the English and colonial systems, and the highly suggestive, although almost unknown to us, Continental systems, the mere research in making known what is now being done in the various countries is not inconsiderable. When to all this is also added the necessary labor of testing how the processes work actually in the life of the community they serve, it will be seen that there is at hand for investigation a field worthy of any law school or learned foundation.

Possibly the American Law Institute, now engaged in restating certain fields of substantive law, may be induced to attempt the job. Lawyers are notoriously ignorant and indifferent to any systems of jurisprudence except that in which they are trained and operate. The demonstration to that profession of the success of procedural reforms, undreamt of by them, but operating almost under their noses, seems an opportunity for the doing of social welfare work of the highest value.

Nor is the dissemination of knowledge of existing systems, extensive as is such a task, all that the law schools and learned foundations should do at the present time. The comparative study herein indicated should lead to conclusions as to further developments of existing judicial instrumentalities, or even to the forming of new ones. This process of research is probably never-ending, for it is not humanly possible to keep ahead of the means which should be constantly developing to enable courts properly to function, and thus in its final effect to enable people to live together

with some degree of harmony in a crowded universe. This is as it should be, for never should the judicial machinery be incapable of improvement. It is a means to an end, not an end in itself, and it must therefore constantly be kept to its function of serving the ends of ultimate justice.

Such is the work that law schools may do in this field. But this should not stand alone. How is the work thus made available actually to be made appealing and thus to be adopted by our public officials?

This is a problem of the utmost difficulty, for except in times of stress or excitement the disposition is to run along with that to which we have become accustomed, or perhaps that which we ourselves have conquered. Lawyers and courts resist changes. How is to be mobilized the political pressure which is probably necessary to translate theoretical reforms into practical court instru

ments? In England a standing rules committee exists to make changes in the procedural rules. This has operated with much success, but the Earl of Birkenhead suggests that without the head of the English legal system, the Lord Chancellor, as a political officer of the Government, changing as the Government changes, the stimulus for reform is lacking.

It is not politically possible to duplicate this system in our States, but various approximations may be made. A rules committee is not now unknown in some States. If to this is added a body of some degree of stability but made up of elements responsive to social and political demands, charged with the duty of discovering and fostering reform and improvement in the judicial system, a considerable advance may be hoped for. Judge Cardozo has advocated such a body for his State of New York, in a proposal for what he terms a "ministry

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Mountain Folks

Some Glimpses of the One Hundred Per Cent Americans in the Blue Ridge Country

E were riding along the road from Luray to the beginning of the ascent to Skyland, when the car stopped before a cluster of wayside graves, neatly fenced in iron, but not well kept. Our driver called attention to one of the three tombstones within the barrier. It marked the resting place of Elizabeth Herzberger, long dead. In the ellipse above her name was carved a hand, pointing heavenward. "The story is," he remarked, "that she requested her husband to add this mark of faith, and he did it. But you will see he had his doubts as to where she was heading. Notice the question mark above the hand." Sure enough, the hope of a higher life had been put under the doubting shadow of an interrogation mark!

Among the ancient mounds that mark Virginia mountain roadsides are numbers graced with the name of Lincoln, borne by members of the family from which Abraham Lincoln came. The Lincolns were a considerable tribe before they died out or migrated to Kentucky and farther west. Which recalls a tale I once heard the late Speaker Champ Clark tell. It was about a Lincoln named Henry, whom he believed to be an uncle of the great President. The

By DON C. SEITZ

old man lived alone with his wife in a Kentucky mountain cabin. One night a prodigious squawking in the hen-coop betrayed the presence of a marauder. "Wake up, Henry," called the good woman, "an' git your shotgun. Some one's a-stealin' the hens."

"No,

Henry refused to be stirred. mother," he replied, "I won't git the gun. I might hit some of the kin."

There are signs of stir in the mountains, echoing the new activity of the plains, induced by the automobile. Yet the people come but shyly from their fastnesses. A pretty young woman, rather smartly dressed by contrast with most of her sisters, came to us at Skyland with a basket of small, hard peaches, which she sought to sell. She had carried them two miles and a half over a mountain road 3,600 feet above the level of the sea. Looking barely twenty, she said she was married and the mother of five children. Yet in all her life she had never been to Luray, but six miles away! She secured now and then a glimpse more of better things than most of her race by visiting the resort. I saw her looking curiously through the door of the serving room at the well-dressed folks around the dining tables, and felt a quick sympathy with

so narrow a life. There are about four million like it being lived in the South.

Under the Volstead Act, the Blue Ridge, the Massanuttens, and the Appalachians might well be called the Mountains of the Moon, with "shine" added. Once remorselessly hunted by "revenuers," the amateur whisky-makers now constitute a class that is almost privileged and instead of selling the smoky output of their stills at plebeian prices, they can now command for "moonshine" figures that are fabulous compared with what they once were, when beating the excise tax was the sole source of profit, and added but little to the market value of corn. The absence of any regularly made "corn" whisky earns it a premium from those whose palates do not care for imported Scotch, which comes in from the seaboard, and the supply nowhere equals the demand. The convenient method of trade is to leave a ten-dollar bill on a stump with a gallon jug beside it in the wilderness. After a discreet period the jug will be found full and the yellowback gone. Compared with the "moonshine" of "revenue" days, the quality of the distillate seems much better. Some of it might be mistaken for Benedictine by an uncultivated palate. In the best circles

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blackberry wine is used for a "chaser." This the women make, and they turn out an excellent product.

It will be apparent that a large flow of money is thus being sent through the mountains from the lowlands. Instead of being hunted as outlaws, the mountaineers are rapidly becoming a favored class. Of course, none can hope for limousines and other fixings of the metropolitan bootlegger. Still it is progress. The National Government does not bother with them very much, the situation being left in the main to local sheriffs, some of whom have zeal; others lack of it to the nth degree. Now and then a "special" dry agent drops in. They tell this tale anent one of the latter who came into the Powell's Fort country not long since to tread a "moonshine" trail. He called at the house of the suspect and found a boy at home. "Is pap at the still?" he inquired genially.

"He is," said the boy.

"Could you show me the way to it?" "I could for a dollar," replied the canny youth.

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"All right," replied the agent, "come along."

"Where's my dollar?"

"Oh, I'll give you that when we come back."

Mountain Folks

"Give it to me now," was the response. "You ain't comin' back!"

No further details were given. The anecdote is in shining contrast, however, with that Corsican tale of Prosper Mérimée's where the boy betrayed a bandit who was hiding in a fodder stack when the chief of the gendarmes promised him a silver watch. In this case the boy's father took him some way down. the road and, commanding the youth to pray, killed him with a shot from his carbine, adding: carbine, adding: "We will have no traitors in our family."

Southern mountain boys do not need guardians. The little chaps of ten or twelve are fine, handsome lads. It seems a pity that they do not live in surroundings that will preserve their early manliness. To grow old in the mountains is to become "queer" at the same time. I have cultivated the theory that wherever you find rattlesnakes there dwell poor whites of the self-outcasting type. It is so in the Southern hills, the Alleghanies, and the Ramapo and Schaghticoke regions near New York. In all these the serpents abound. Note the buxom appearance of the young in the family group herewith, when contrasted with their elders.

It will perhaps be considered shocking to say that moonshine money is going to

improve things in the mountains. Bear in mind, these people, for two centuries, have had no opportunity to get money in any quantity in any honest way. Oldfashioned moonshining was perilous and poor in pay. The modern business is just the reverse. The rich people who once despised the "hill-billies" are now their patrons and protectors.

Ambitious young folks from the mountains begin to see chances of escape. Some were always getting away. The trickle is now growing into a stream. The benefits from the fast-coming changes will be large. Remember this is a 100-per-cent American stock that has long lain fallow, choked in industrial competition by conditions it could not overcome, and lodged on such poor lands as to give no chance for prosperity through agriculture. The roll of "mountain folks" who are making good on the plain is constantly growing, while the work of schools like Berea and its kind continue to work unending good.

In spite of their chief avocation, the mountain folks are sternly pious. They are Fundamentalists who take their religion as they do their liquor-straight! Mountain preachers are men of power. A revival is a foaming piece of excitement. Here are our last Primitives!

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Genius at the Guarded Gate

OT very long ago there came to

Ellis Island from the overflow

ing National archives at Washington an unexpected consignment of public records. When the score or more of bags and bundles were opened, it was found that they contained the original enrollments of immigrants who came to this country away back in the days when Madison, Monroe, and several other early Presidents were in office.

The ancient chronicles, long out of date in so far as legal limitations were concerned, had been crowded out by more modern documents and, being of value solely as relics, had been shipped for permanent storage to the Nation's gateway, very near the place where they were first inscribed. There, at the threshold of the New World and in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, were fittingly buried forever in the Government vaults a partial muster of the men, women, and children who have joined in the making of America.

There is no story to write about the old records. Almost at touch they would crumble to pieces. But they suggest a story of immense interest to-day in the bearing they have upon the question that has been raised, "Has Ellis Island failed?" The new plan of weeding out or hand-picking our immigrants in Europe, tried as an experiment since August, 1925, the higher officials at Washington say, has proved a success. They say that Ellis Island and old Castle Garden before it have had their day, and that the ten-million-dollar plant which nestles close beside the Liberty Statue in New York Harbor will in future times be used only as a place of temporary detention, mainly for the "undesirables" on their way out of the country.

By REMSEN CRAWFORD

"The Singing Lad from Scotland"

came near failing to gain entry to the land which made little freckle-faced Andy, then a boy of thirteen, one of the most renowned men of the modern world; that Joseph Pulitzer, the great editor and pioneer in militant journalism, swam ashore at Boston because of some hindrance; that Charles Proteus Steinmetz, master of the electric motor and wizard of the alternating currents, was excluded or detained upon landing here; When one reflects that the Carnegies that Michael Pupin, conqueror of elec

tric intrigues called inductance and teacher of sciences, was held up at Castle Garden as likely to become a public charge-when all these close calls of our truly great men are considered, with the thousands of others not mentioned here, it must be acknowledged that Castle Garden and Ellis Island have failed prodigiously, absurdly, in assizing genius at their guarded gates.

The writer of this article once said banteringly, but good-naturedly, to an old immigrant inspector whom he had known for years on Ellis Island: "Why do you make so many mistakes about that thing we call genius here at the gateway? I suppose if Shakespeare were to come here you would rule him out because of that unpleasant little incident about stealing a neighbor's deer which for a time made him persona non grata around his home town.'

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Drawing out his chest until his bald head looked down from behind, the old inspector, whose lifetime had been spent in sorting out humanity at the Nation's gateway and assizing the character of our future citizens, wheeled around and said: "The law says that any alien who has ever been convicted of or who has admitted committing a crime involving moral turpitude shall be excluded from the United States. Mr. Shakespeare or any other sheep-stealer would have to go back, that's all. Besides, no mortal has ever yet been endowed with the gift of discovering the virtues or the vices of a man by a look in the eye. Men's faults are not written on their foreheads. Genius hides from the gaze of the curious and is often embedded in a physique which any doctor would exclude, just as in the case of Steinmetz."

A very worthy colored preacher who spends his week-days scrubbing floors on

The Man Who Painted the President's Son

Ellis Island and his Sundays sermonizing before a suburban colored congregation had been listening in upon our conversation. He clarified the situation somewhat by observing that "Cain was the first immigrant in this world when he crossed over into the land of Nod; but Cain couldn't come in here at Ellis Island wid all dat criminal record behind 'im, no, sah, and I doubts very much, sah, whether Adam and Eve could make it without making mighty good explanations, sah."

It just happened that my old friend, the immigrant inspector, and I were both late in leaving the Island that night. We were strolling along the sea wall waiting for the next ferry-boat. An unusual quietude reigned about the place as the hour of twilight came on. The babel of voices from over the seven seas had died from the detention quarters, where hundreds of hapless wanderers upon the face of the earth were housed awaiting deportation or, mayhaps, a favorable action upon their appeals down in Washington. The lights flashed on throughout the great immigration buildings and the hospital where six hundred physical or mental defectives awaited the verdict of the doctor's observations.

At such a moment and amid such weird, creepy sensations there was a sudden burst of music from the dilapidated old piano in the Red Cross loungingroom, close by the hospital. Several

crippled marines had been playing billiards in the room, but the noisy slapping of their ivories soon stopped. It was real music that most impressive air which will immortalize Franz Schubert as long as there is a soul to be soothed by "concord of sweet sounds"-Schubert's "Serenade." Never has the melody seemed so appealing to the writer of this article. as it did that night with its earnestness of tone, its bewildering modulations, of tone, its bewildering modulations, shifting from major to minor keys.

At my suggestion, we strolled back down the sea wall to the Red Cross reception-room, and found to our utter astonishment that the person who sat at the piano sending dreams from his finger tips afloat over New York Harbor was a totally blind immigrant-blind since boyhood.

The old immigrant inspector was flabbergasted. "That's how genius stumps us," he finally observed. "How in thunderations is a board of special inquiry going to tell that a stone-blind man like this can make such music? We can't have pianos strung along the line of inspection to test such aliens, no more than they could have had an electrical laboratory for Steinmetz, nor a newspaper plant for Pulitzer."

When the pathetic story of the blind pianist was printed next morning through press associations in every city in the United States, the American sense of fair play and a free hand to talent was

reflected in hundreds of letters pleading for the musician's admittance to the country. Exercising his discretionary powers, Secretary of Labor James J. Davis directed that the Ellis Island authorities release him in custody of his brother in a bond of $500 to guarantee expense of deportation in case he ever became a public charge. This he has never done. The last heard of him by the writer of this article was to the effect that "Professor" Camillone is on the concert stage.

Michele Califano came from Naples, hoping to gain entry to the United States under the exemption granted then to artists. He had been excluded as likely to become a public charge because of partial deafness, and also because he had not satisfied a board of special inquiry that he was, indeed, an artist.

Michele Califano's lucky star began rising when his appeal fell upon such a state of congestion of business before the National Board of Immigrant Appeal in Washington, for if he had not been kept waiting in the crowded detention room at Ellis Island long enough to paint a real picture from life and thus prove himself a real artist he might have been sent back to Naples, where artists are as numerous as taxicabs in New York City.

When the full story of Califano's genius was laid before Secretary of Labor James J. Davis, little time was lost by the big-hearted Cabinet member in letting him come into the United States. Recent inquiry by the writer of this article of his friends as to his accomplishments here brought out the fact that he established a studio in New York, and later went to Washington. There he painted a portrait of the son of the President who died soon after the family went to the White House and presented it to Mrs. Coolidge, who introduced the young painter in artistic circles of Washington to great advantage to himself.

One winter's day while Ellis Island was overflowing with detained immigrants a slim, gawky young fellow from Armenia was found in the back yard beside the detention quarters building up the bust of a woman in the snow-bank of heavy drift. He was of Italian parentage, but had come from that legendary land near Ararat. This fellow, too, had claimed exemption from the quotas as an artist, but his proof had not been very convincing. That morning, while the letter-carrier was going through the daily program of calling out the names of immigrants for whom he had brought mail, this fellow took advantage of the

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