your attention last year, was decided by the Supreme Court of the United States on the 19th day of last December. This decision fully sustained the contention of the Government and firmly established the status of the law in all of its essential features. It is now a settled rule of law that, for the protection of their employes, railroad companies are required to equip their cars with couplers that can be both coupled and uncoupled without the necessity for men to go between the cars, and to maintain such couplers in an operative condition. As stated by Chief Justice Fuller, who wrote the opinion in the Johnson case, "the object was to protect the lives and limbs of railroad employes by rendering it unnecessary for a man operating the couplers to go between the ends of the cars." That is the real test of compliance with the law.

Following the Johnson decision came the decision of Judge Humphrey of the Southern District of Illinois, in the case of the U. S. vs. the Southern Railway. This decision further fortified the law by holding that to use a car at all when its safety appliances are in such a defective condition as to compel men to go between the cars is in itself a disregard of law. It was also decided that reasonable care or due diligence to keep equipment in order is no defense to an action brought to recover the penalty prescribed by law; also the use of an M. C. B. defect card to cover defects to safety appliances does not relieve a carrier from responsibility for accepting a car in a defective condition from one of its connections.

There were a number of cases that hinged upon this decision and it was at one time stated that the railroads contemplated an appeal, but after thoroughly investigating the subject this idea was abandoned (if it had ever been entertained), and all the roads involved have paid the statutory penalty for violation. The law has, therefore, met the most sanguine hopes of its friends, and with a President and Attorney General both determined to see that it is enforced to the letter, the efforts of the

Commission to perform the duty imposed upon it with the earnest COoperation of many railroad managers and members of your association, have resulted in a vastly better condition of equipment the country over.

To illustrate the improvement that has recently taken place, I shall not mention names, but will give you the results of some recent comparisons made by us from the reports of our inspectors, covering two of the largest systems in the country. For the six months ending December 31, 1904, reports covering these two systems show that of the cars inspected 38% and 21%, respectively, were found to be defective, while for the period from January 1, 1905, to date, the defective cars were but 8% and 2%, respectively, on approximately an equal number of cars. This is a very gratifying result, the more so as it is an indication of a general improvement that has taken place in the past six months, and I have no doubt that the result of this improvement will make itself manifest in a vastly decreased number of casualties to employes when our accident statistics for the year make their appearance.

One question that has been brought to a head is the acceptance of defective cars in interchange, with the understanding that the receiving road will repair them. This has been the rule in many places, as you are aware, but since the Johnson and Humphrey decisions have been rendered it is rapidly being done away with so far as safety appliances are concerned. The rule now coming to be most commonly observed is that no road will receive cars in interchange unless safety appliances are in perfect order. This is the only practicable method whereby receiving roads may protect themselves from the consequences of violation of the law, and the Commission has exerted its influence to secure general adoption of the rule. In some cases this rule has entailed hardship, as it has led to the detention of live stock and perishable freight, and has necessitated the hauling of defective cars for considerable distances in order that they might be repaired, but such

results were only to be expected as a consequence of the changed condition, and make it all the more imperative for delivering roads to pay proper attention to the inspection and repair of cars at interchange points. The natural result is bound to be that each road will pay proper attention to its own repairs instead of passing the burden on to its connections, and the number of defective cars at interchange points will be reduced to the minimum. In other words, each road will do its part and no road will be unduly burdened. It is confidently predicted that before a year is over a railroad will no more think of accepting a freight car that is out of order than it would think of accepting a passenger car in improper condition. And this is as it should be. It lessens the number of accidents, reduces the number of damage suits, and leads to rigid inspection and an ideal condition of equipment.

The commission has repeatedly been requested to interpret the law in certain particulars, and has been asked whether this thing or that thing can be permitted; or whether this device or that device can be used. Such questions are idle, as the Commission can give but one answer to them, and that is to furnish copies of the law and the decisions of the courts interpreting it. Interested parties should familiarize themselves with the state of the law, and decide for themselves what is and what is not a violation. If in doubt on any point, they should ask the legal department of their road for a ruling, and not the Commission. On the Commission is imposed the duty of seeing that the law is enforced, and it is entirely out of place to ask an officer charged with the enforcement of a law whether in some particular instance he intends to perform his duty or not. If an accident happens to cars in transit; if a sudden jerk breaks an uncoupling chain or pulls out a drawbar, the best answer as to what the Commission would do about enforcing the law under such conditions is for one to apply the rules of ordinary common sense. The law does not require impossibilities, nor does it

aim to impose burdens that cannot be met, and even a Government inspector or prosecuting officer must be given credit for the possession of ordinary judgment and the ability possessed by ordinary men.

It is most gratifying to be able to state that in most instances railroad officials have heartily co-operated with the Commission in its efforts to secure compliance with the law, and I embrace this opportunity to extend the thanks of the Commission to the members of your association who have so faithfully and earnestly labored in harmony with the Commission, in the face of many difficulties, to bring about the pleasing results that now obtain. The Commission's rules of inspection, which are based upon your standards and recommended practice as well as the law, are being generally accepted and recognized as the criterion of proper conditions. When this becomes fully the rule of action, the necessity for prosecutions, or for further legislation covering these matters will be entirely done away with. In this connection I desire to reiterate what I have before stated at these conventions, that I hope to see the time when the standards and recommended practices of your association shall be the law of the land, and I think you will agree with me that events of the past few months have given your standards and practices a quasi-legal standing, in so far as they are covered by the rules of the Commission.

I desire to call your attention, with special approval, to the various orders and rules that have been recently issued by carriers with regard to the acceptance of foreign cars in interchange, and methods of inspection; and particularly do I wish to commend the circular of instructions issued by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. These rules foreshadow the ideal condition of equipment which the members of your association and the Commission have so long hoped and worked for.

I have no doubt that the pleasant relations that have always existed between the Master Car Builders and the Commission and its corps of inspectors

judges," he voiced a sentiment which unfortunately is only too prevalent. It is in fact more than a conicidence that almost contemporaneously with the publication of the first of the articles referred to, Mr. Bryan began his agitation for an elective federal judiciary and the labor unions of Chicago entered the political arena for the avowed purpose of removing from the bench those judges whose decisions and actions had appeared inimical to their interest.

ILLEGAL REDRESS.

Whenever a legal remedy has not been afforded, the lack of confidence in the law and in its administration, wherever found among Anglo-Saxon peoples, has resulted in conspiracies, in bloodshed, in machine breaking, in arson, in Wat Tyler rebellions. Where, however, legal methods of redress have been obtainable-that is to say, wherever a semblance of a popular suffrage ог a popular control has been afforded-they have resulted in strikes and in more or less turbulent agitation. All this has been in the main within the bounds of the law and has involved political agitation and activity rather than muscular revolution. Especially has this been the case in America.

Here, as perhaps nowhere else, has the idea of popular sovereignty taken root. Here, more persistently than anywhere else, has the potency of the ballot been suggested. The laboringman and the discontented of all classes have, in America, for a long time been everywhere taught the doctrine that in a democracy every wrong can be righted at the polls and that, where this remedy exists, there is no excuse for anarchy, no justification for a resort to violence. There can be no doubt of the fact that since the time of Chief Justice Marshall we have, more than any other nation, been governed in the last resort by our courts and not by our legislature, and that in America the struggle between the judicial and the legislative departments of government, which has so long been carried on among the Anglo-Saxon peoples, has reached its most extreme point and has resulted in a judicial domina

tion. But it is still true that the ultimate sovereignty rests in the people, and it is the general belief in this fact that in Americà makes a government by the judiciary a possibility. Among the rank and file of the people, however, the belief is general that the powers conceded to the judiciary are already great enough and there unquestionably exists a deep rooted determination that no more shall be conceded, that they shall go no further. It is indeed more than probable that to further extend the judicial control would result in a class revolt.

CONTROL OF SMALL EMPLOYERS.

Like so many of its kind, the doctrine that for every evil there is a remedy at the polls, for a long time meant nothing so far as what is known as the labor movement was concerned. It could be safely urged even by those who were most antagonistic to the interest of the American workingman. The reason lay in the fact, that, until quite recently, the great conservative farmer class has everywhere controlled our elections. These small employers of labor, whose own interest have lain in small wages and in long hours of toil and whose habit it has always been to exaggerate the purchasing value of the wages paid in cities, have never as a class looked with favor on the demands of the city laboring man or of the wage earner generally. With the growth of the American city, however, a change has

come.

LABOR'S LEGISLATIVE INFLUENCE.

The Chicago delegation in the state of Illinois, and the city delegations in the state of New York have for a long time possessed a controlling influence in the legislature of their respective states, and the members of these delegations have found it necessary to consider the wishes of the labor vote in their several districts, if they cared to retain their seats at all. So, too, vast bodies of at least partially organized workingmen have begun to center in our mining districts and on our railroads, all of whom have the suffrage and whose votes are, within limited areas at any rate, more or less control

ing. The appeal to the ballot can therefore now be made, and it is made.

LABOR STATUTES ENACTED.

Its first manifestation was the enactment by a number of the state legislatures of statutes which limited the hours of labor in factories and in mines, forbade the payment of wages in commodities or in orders upon company stores or "truck shops," regulated the method of weighing and screening coal, where the wages paid were dependent upon the amount of coal mined, and which forbade the refusing of work to men because of their membership in labor unions or their discharge for the same reason. These statutes, in short, sought to determine by legislative enactment and in favor of labor the main questions in controversy between organized capital and organized labor. With but few exceptions, however, these statutes met with judicial disapproval and were declared invalid, some on account of their basic unreasonableness, some on account of a latent individualism in the courts which seemed ever fearful that legislative interference would stagnate industry and which considered the protection of the business interests the paramount duty of the hour. So strong a position was indeed, taken upon the subject in a number of the states, especially in Illinois and in Colorado, that it is now taken as an axiom by organized labor in the country generally, that whatever law is advocated by it, that law will be declared to be unconstitutional and refused enforcement by the judiciary.

GOVERNMENT BY JUDICIARY. Organized labor has not however on this account ceased its efforts, and the result of the decisions has merely been to prolong the class struggle and to force the attack along different lines. At first, there was a return to former methods and an attempt to secure by strikes, boycotts and by threatening demonstrations the relief which the legislatures were precluded by the courts from affording. The McCormick strike which preceded the Haymarket riot, was pre-eminently an eight hour labor day demonstration, and the more recent

Here, how

strikes in the anthracite coal field of Pennsylvania and in the Leiter mines at Zeigler, Illinois, have also been attempted to secure by strikes and by an indirect exhibition of force, privileges which at one time it was fondly believed the legislatures could and would concede. ever, the opposition of the courts was again encountered and the appeal to the injunction proved as effectual for the employer as had formerly been the appeal to the constitution. As a result, the pendulum is now slowly but naturally swinging once more in the direction of the ballot and the "unfair judge" has become the object of electoral attack. Slowly, indeed, but thoroughly has organized labor come to realize that we, as a nation, are governed by our judiciary and not by our legislatures, and that it is the judge in America who dictates our social and industrial policies. Its efforts therefore are coming to be more and more directed toward obtaining a judiciary which shall be in touch with popular movements and responsive to their demands.

THE DEMAND FOR THE LIFE-TERM

JUDICIARY.

So far the writer of this article has attempted to set forth the claims and the attitude of one side in this great industrial and governmental controversy. The answer of the other party now remains to be considered, and that answer is not a mere negation but a taking up of the gauntlet and an affirmative challenge. It has assumed the form of an imperative demand for a life-term judiciary, state and national, removable only for misbehavior in office. It was voiced as clearly by Mr. Justice Brewer of the Supreme Court of the United States, as by any other speaker or writer. In a recent address he said:

"There are to-day ten thousand millions of dollars invested in railroad property, whose owners in this country number less than two million persons. Can it be that whether this immense sum shall earn a dollar, or bring the slightest recompense to those who have