Mr. Niles has died since the Committee made its nominations. Other nominations for any of the above offices may be made in writing by not less than nine members of the Association. The Worcester County Bar Association has very kindly invited the members of the Massachusetts Bar Association to lunch with them on Saturday after the annual meeting. Trains leave the South Station, Boston, at 5:00 and 5:52 P.M., arriving at Worcester at 6:06 and 7:00 P.M. Rooms may be engaged at the Hotel Bancroft, Worcester, at rates from $1.50 to $3.50 per day for single rooms. JAMES A. LOWELL, Secretary, 38 EQUITABLE BUILDING, BOSTON, MASS. OCTOBER 2, 1914. Massachusetts Bar Association. FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. Pursuant to the foregoing call, the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Bar Association was held at the Hotel Bancroft, Worcester, on Friday and Saturday, October 9 and 10, 1914. As announced in the call for the meeting, the annual banquet was held on Friday evening. The address of the Hon. Arthur P. Rugg at the banquet appears on subsequent pages of this volume. FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. The Fifth Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Bar Association was held at the Hotel Bancroft, Worcester, Saturday, October 10, 1914, at 9 A.M. The President, Moorfield Storey, delivered the following address: THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. Gentlemen of the Massachusetts Bar Association : This is emphatically an age of organization, for men recognize that by united effort they can accomplish more for the common good than any one man can secure by his individual efforts. He who works for himself must still work by himself, but he who would work for us all has a right to ask all who agree with him in his object to work with him. Ecclesiastical and political organizations have long been familiar to us, but this generation has seen a wonderful development of organization among men engaged in every form of human activity from great business combinations like the Standard Oil Company and the great labor unions through chambers of commerce and baseball leagues, if I may reverse the popular order of precedence, to camera clubs and automobile associations. No trade, no amusement, no charitable object is to-day without its representative organization. These have all proved efficient in securing the objects of their members and are encouraged by public opinion, save in the case of business combinations, which have been too efficient in promoting private ends and for that reason are regarded as public enemies. The members of our profession, although their business is largely internecine warfare, have not been able to resist this tendency, and perhaps stimulated by increasing attacks from without have combined "to provide for the common defence" and "to promote the general welfare" by organized attempts to remedy the abuses which have attended too long the administration of the law. Bar associations have sprung up all over the country, and are actively engaged in the effort to improve the law and its practice. No one can deny that they are useful and entitled to support from the profession and from the public, precisely because they are not formed to increase the profits or advance the fortunes of their members, but solely for public purposes with the incidental satisfaction which comes from the consciousness of duty well done and occasionally of dinner well eaten. The Massachusetts Bar Association now ending its fifth year has come late into the field and finds it to a certain extent occupied by the bar associations of the various counties and by other legal fraternities. This is in some ways unfortunate, for it leads to useless duplication of effort, and at times to conflicts of opinion and a lack of harmony in action with consequent loss of influence. Each of these associations has its legitimate function, but the state association, properly organized and with full membership, will have a place that no one of the others can fill. It is impossible that a local bar association should not be influenced by local prejudices and local desires. It cannot represent the interests and the opinions of the whole profession as well as an association whose members come from every corner of the state, and the local associations should work in and with the state association, and not without and against it. I would urge every member of the Massachusetts bar to join this association, and to coöperate actively and intelligently with the other members in promoting its objects. But perhaps men may ask " Why? What can such an association give me as an equivalent for my time and my annual subscription ?" Let me try to answer these questions. In the first place it can hardly be denied that the members of the bar are interested in the work of the legislature, and need to be informed about it while our laws are in the making. We may not all be as fortunate as our brother who, being asked what he thought of a proposed reform, replied: "Well, I don't know. I've got cases on both sides of that question;" but there are none of us who are not, or who may not be, very much interested in one or more of the measures which are urged upon the legislature in any year. The statutes which regulate a procedure and practice, in some cases the rules of evidence as well as the provisions of substantive law, have suffered from the activity of individual lawyers, who, disappointed at the result of some litigation, have rushed in their wrath to the legislature and secured a change of the law or the practice. I can well recall my astonishment as I was about to present a question of construction to the court when I learned from my opponent's brief that without notice to me he had persuaded the legislature to pass a statute which repealed the law on which I relied. I was fortunate in persuading the court to hold its decision until I induced the legislature to amend the new law so that it should not apply to pending cases. This is merely an illustration. The report of your committee on legislation shows what extraordinary laws are proposed and earnestly pressed by men who often do not in the least appreciate what they are doing, and a strong organization of competent men is |