and it may be hoped that the business community may soon enjoy the advantages which such a reorganization would insure.

Our Federal procedure would be greatly hastened also by the appointment of more judges in the districts. In some of the jurisdictions the docket is so overburdened that cases cannot be called for a year after they are filed. A material increase in the number of judges would at once remedy this difficulty. The abuse of "continuances" is also a serious block to quick procedure. For these both the attorneys and the courts are responsible. It is now customary even in the Federal courts for the judge to grant one and often two continuances or postponements on the application of either side, without serious question. The attorneys, knowing this, make use of it not only to enable them to conduct their cases elsewhere, but also to delay and harass the opposing party. A successful attorney with a large practice is sometimes obliged to ask for postponement because of conflicting court dates, but a more careful examination into these postponements and a flat refusal of the courts to allow a continuance beyond a certain reasonable period would remove the most serious cause of the loss of time.

A Simpler Court Procedure. In the second place, lawyers and laymen alike agree that the procedure in most of our courts is needlessly complicated, and inordinately time-consuming. President Taft from his judicial experience was well acquainted with these weaknesses and made it his special effort to remedy them. Pursuant to his suggestion, a committee of the Supreme Court was appointed which revised and simplified the entire method of pleading and conducting equity suits in all the Federal courts; a similar revision is contemplated for the ordinary law cases. Most of the needless complexity in the starting of suits and in the nature of the exact pleas to be entered has descended to us from English prodecure of two hundred years ago-while in the land of its origin, this same procedure has long been abandoned for simpler, more convenient forms. In this respect our Federal courts are far more advanced than those of the States. A commission appointed several years ago by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to investigate legal procedure reported that over 50% of the recent cases in the courts of that State had been decided on points of practice that is, on questions of form in the methods of bringing suit. The tendency to seize on trivial detail or minute discrepancies in statement or form has been allowed to run riot through our procedure with appalling cost to the community and to the popular respect for the courts. Under the continued stimulus of Mr. Taft and with the co-operation of the American Bar Association strong efforts are now being made to divest procedure of its unnecessary formalities and delays. Nothing could be done which would so effectually rehabilitate the judicial system in the trust of the people. In the last analysis we do not measure the value of our tribunals by the method of their choice, whether appointed or elected, nor by their qualifications, nor their salaries, nor by the

recall, nor even alone by their erudition and knowledge of the law,rather do we believe "by their fruits ye shall know them." If the courts can give us broad, statesmanlike interpretation of the law through a quick, simple and cheap method of procedure, it matters not whether they are appointed nor whether we can recall them or their decisions. And if on the other hand we adopt every modern device to make them sympathetic with the popular will but allow the technicalities of a by-gone age to remain, encumbering their machinery, their real work is not done.

A third and more serious criticism of our court system is that it protects the powerful against the weak, and is largely a means of maintaining and fortifying the interests of the conservative classes exclusively. This criticism while untrue in many cases has sufficient basis to require examination. The legal training of the judge from the time he starts out as a practicing lawyer is such as to attract his attention to the sacredness of property; his mind is chiefly occupied with the means of upholding property rights. In examining the historical reasons for our existing law, he is inclined to look upon the past with much greater care than upon the natural growth of the law. As a result his whole professional education makes him intensely conservative unless by temperament his natural instinct favors progressive changes. He believes that ignorance, poverty, crime, and industrial inefficiency are largely the result of willful neglect of their own interests on the part of those concerned, and he feels that "those concerned" are the pauper, the criminal and the loafer. A profession whose members are trained by long environment to this view of life must naturally tend to sympathize with what is, rather than to seek new interpretations of the law in the interest of less influential classes of the people.

It is no criticism of the judge to say that his education has molded his habit of mind, since the same is true of any other professional or business class, yet the fact is a serious weakness in our judicial system, and has created a strong feeling on the part of the lower classes that the judiciary is under the influence of those who also control the greatest property interests. Such a control if it exists is not the result of a deeply laid plot or scheme but rather of this psychological fact of natural reaction against change, caused by the environment and training of the judge's mind. This conservative bias must be changed, not by a change in the appointing power, not by a recall, nor by any other device which may threaten the independence of the judges, but rather by a change in the method of training men for the bar. Since the judge is first a lawyer, it is the education of the lawyer which must be made to include a knowledge of the causes and nature of social and economic growth. If our law is to be progressive it must be interpreted by men trained to see the necessity of legal growth and life. Here again some foreign systems have developed more rapidly than our own. The Germ government educates its judges with care, giving them a

thorough course of training in legal, social and economic affairs. If the members of our courts in this country were so educated there would be little reason for complaint of class partiality.

There is no doubt that these complaints have been much overdrawn. The radical agitator is not the only critic of the bias of the Federal courts; the market manipulator who may have schemes of stock jobbing which are interfered with by the decisions of the courts also complains bitterly of the judge's influence in unsettling "conservative business interests." The importance of these criticisms from the two opposite extremes of the business world must be duly discounted. If our judicial system were simplified, our court procedure curtailed and expedited, and the legal training of the attorney were made more social in character we should have a national judiciary second to none.

The Injunction.-The demand of the labor organizations for a change in the law governing injunctions is due to certain abuses. in the granting of this writ which have crept into our court practice in the last few decades. An injunction is a command or order issued by a court, requiring or forbidding certain persons to perform certain acts. The purpose of the writ or order is to prevent irreparable damage to property or to the public welfare. The court upon being convinced that a grave danger of this damage exists, instead of waiting until the damage has occurred and then punishing the culprit-a course that would uphold the law but would not save the public or the property owner from injury,-prefers rather to intervene before the evil is wrought and by saying to the wrong-doer, "Thou shalt not," bring him to a sober sense of what he is about to do and remove all doubts as to his legal responsibility if he persists. The idea is a practical one and has been applied most frequently and successfully in other fields outside the realm of labor controversies. But in labor questions many of the courts, being ultra-solicitous to protect property rights, have allowed themselves to be led into an extreme use of the writ and have thereby brought on a reaction which threatens seriously to curtail its usefulness. The excessive granting of restraining orders and injunctions is complained of because it is claimed (a) they are issued too hastily without hearing both sides; (b) they do not describe accurately and fully the precise acts forbidden; (c) when so used as a weapon by the employer and violated by the worker the latter is subject to fine and imprisonment without a jury trial.

(a) The hasty issue of restraining orders, or temporary injunctions is especially objected to in that it prevents the persons restrained from presenting their side of the controversy before the order is issued. A judge may be applied to even at his home, by the attorney for one side, with a sworn statement that immediate 1 Most of the injunctions issued by the courts are in no way connected with labor questions.

and irreparable injury is about to be inflicted on his client's property. No testimony need be taken from the other party nor need the latter even be summoned, but if the judge feels after hearing the arguments of the first party that there is reasonable ground to expect such injury, unless immediate steps are taken, he may grant a temporary restraining order which may run for weeks or even months before an argument is heard upon both sides. If at that time the order is found to have been unnecessary and is cancelled, the defendant has nevertheless suffered a serious disadvantage and has at least been placed under a stigma which has unjustly prejudiced his side in the controversy. "But" say the friends of the present system, "it is no injustice to be commanded not to do an illegal thing. The courts do not enjoin the laborer from doing what he has a right to do." Unfortunately they very frequently do so, however, and it is this that gives force to the second objection.

(b) The vagueness and inaccuracy of many restraining orders makes them far more sweeping and drastic than the law permits, and on appeal they must frequently be modified and brought within the law. But they are not changed until months after they were originally issued, and in the meanwhile every person mentioned in them is under the severe restraint of an illegal court order. This falls with special weight upon workmen in a labor controversy no matter how just or unjust may be their cause, and it is only aggravated by the "blanket" injunction which is addressed to the defendants, John Doe, Richard Roe, "and all other persons whomsoever, acting in conjunction with them." If the acts which the court or a single judge improperly and illegally prohibits are necessary to the successful conduct of a strike, such as peaceful persuasion, then the court order is in effect a complete defeat of the strike in most cases. Many restraining orders even go further and forbid the strikers "and all other persons, etc.," from using their undoubted constitutional rights in connection with a labor controversy. In the Bucks Stove and Range case,1 Samuel Gompers and others had established an illegal boycott against the stoves and other products of the Bucks Company and they were very properly forbidden from continuing it, but in its injunction the Washington court even went so far as to forbid them from referring to the controversy in print or in their public meetings-an order which later, on appeal, had to be modified since it denied the fredom of speech and of the press, as protected by the Constitution.

(c) He who violates an injunction or restraining order is guilty of "contempt of court" and may be summarily punished by fine or imprisonment or both, without a jury trial. The court which has issued the original order, commands the arrest of the defendant and allows him to explain his conduct or produce evidence to show

1 See Gompers v. Bucks Stove and Range Co., 221 U. S. 418, and Gompers v. U. S., 233 U. S. 604; 1914.

that he did not commit the act complained of. If from the testimony it appears that he is guilty, he may be allowed to apologize to the court and promise future obedience or in serious cases he may be imprisoned for a short time. These provisions are in themselves most reasonable and lenient and cannot be criticized as severe, but when applied in labor cases, to the violation of hastily issued orders, they cast upon the defendant the reproach of violating the law and of having a jail sentence hanging over him when in fact his action may have been well within his legal rights. Later the injunction may be changed or dissolved altogether by a higher court and the decision and sentence reversed, but henceforth the defendant is stigmatized as an anarchist or a criminal, regardless of the merits of the case.

It was doubtless these considerations and the insistence of the labor unions which led Congress in 1914 to include sections 17 to 25 in the Clayton Act, and thereby regulate the whole question of Federal injunctions in labor controversies. These sections established a new set of rules governing such injunctions, as follows:

No preliminary injunction may be issued without notice to both parties.

No temporary restraining order may be granted without such notice unless it clearly appears from statements supported by affidavit that an immediate and irreparable injury, loss or damage will result to the applicant before notice can be served and a hearing had. Further, such temporary restraining order must be endorsed with the date and hour of its issue, must be recorded in the office of the Clerk of the Court, and must state the damage and show why it is irreparable and why the order was granted without notice.

Such temporary restraining orders expire in ten days, but may be renewed for a like period if good cause is shown and the reason for the extension must be entered on the record.

Upon the granting of each restraining order without notice the question of the issuance of a preliminary injunction must be set down for a hearing with notice to both sides, in order that the whole question may be inquired into in the presence of counsel for both parties.

Any party served with a restraining order without notice, may upon two days' notice to the applicant, appear before the court and move the dissolution or modification of the order, and a hearing must then be had.

Any party applying for a restraining order or injunction must give security in such sum as the court may deem proper, for the payment of costs and such damages as may be incurred to the parties restrained by the order, in case it is later decided that such parties were wrongfully enjoined or restrained.

Every injunction or restraining order must set forth fully the