methods employed so effectually in the Philadelphia Court of Domestic Relations will enable one to understand how easy it is for a properly constituted court to handle these delicate social relations in such manner as to truly conserve human interests as well as administer the law with meticulous accuracy. These new methods are giving rise to the thought that perhaps after all folks were not created for the express purpose of fitting a rigid and static law.

Bar Endorses Friendly Procedure One of the interesting things about the Minneapolis Conciliation court is that it was created at the request of the Minnesota State Bar Association. And after a reasonable trial of the idea the State Bar Association has adopted a resolution asking the legislature to enlarge the conciliation jurisdiction from $50 to $100 in order to extend the economies of simple procedure to a larger circle of citizenship. It is perfectly clear that somebody must be a loser when any claim under one hundred dollars is litigated formally with a jury and two lawyers. Usually all three. parties, plaintiff, defendant and public are losers.

What is at the bottom of ordinary petty litigation? What causes it? Doubtless in many cases there is misunderstanding of the facts. Neither side is fully informed. Our contentious system of administering justice is likely to foster misunderstandings. A lawsuit is a battle. Litigants are obliged to save their best facts for the critical moment.

And in many instances a mistaken notion of the law is responsible for litigation. Conciliation procedure prevents loss at the outset on this score because summons will not be issued unless in a verified statement of claim the plaintiff makes out a prima facie case. This sensible method saves the court time and trouble and prevents its process from being used for purposes calculated to bring all judicial procedure into disrepute.

There is another frequent cause for suing, aside from mistakes as to the facts and the law. It is anger. Doubtless many plaintiffs are actuated by motives of spite

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or wounded pride. And even more defendants hold out against justice because of vengeful feelings.

Now, what could be so wholesome, when there are hard feelings, as to have the parties closeted for a short time with a disinterested, reasonable person whose only interest is justice and the saving of trouble and expense? And what better time for such an interview than at the very outset, before bad feeling has been aggravated by expenses and the fear of loss?

Our contentious system is admirably designed to discover hidden facts and to compel a searching of the law and the precedents. It serves the end of building up from small aggregates the mighty wall of the common law which protects all our civil rights and liberties. I do not counsel a departure from the fundamental. theory of justice which we believe appropriate for self-governing people. But I do assert that the universal employment of the ponderous machinery of contentious. procedure, ab initio, for the adjustment of all the little neighborhood disputes and misunderstandings is the perversion of the principles of a great jurisprudence; it is litigation gone mad; it is the worst foe which confronts justice.

Conciliation as we have it thus far in American courts is no enemy of our historic principles of administering justice. It is merely a sensible method of fostering settlements, with the addition of counsel from a trained jurist. If the attempt fails-that is if either party is dissatisfied-there is then no prejudice to resort to our accustomed contentious procedure. Conciliation as we know it is no foe to an established system. It is a friend which relieves the ponderous machinery of adjudication of a numerous class of little cases which this machinery is not well designed to handle, and never can be made to handle economically and sensitively.

It is fortunate that conciliation has begun in our land as a part of court procedure. There are two reasons; first because conciliation when guided by trained judges to settlements is genuine adjudica

tion. In Denmark and Norway conciliation was adopted as a positive foe to judicial procedure, after the united kingdom, over a century ago, had tried in vain to induce judges and lawyers to reform judicial procedure in the interest of justice. Out of that unfortunate struggle came the rule that no lawyer could be a conciliator. And the other reason for congratulation is that the perfectly amazing success of conciliation would have inevitably created a demand in this country, sooner or later, for conciliation procedure. And if the courts had not. themselves acted, conciliation would nevertheless have come, in time, even against their opposition, in which case it would not have been so safe and competent and the courts would have lost the wholesome experience of solving a great problem and adapting their procedure to modern necessities.

Travelers have told us of an African tribe which settles controversies by requiring both parties to eat of a certain poisonous root. Judgment is awarded to the one who can endure the nauseous sickness longer. We have no right to be skeptical of this story. Not very many generations back our own ancestors knew no better way to adjudicate than by wager of battle and ordeals of one kind or another. We have no reason to be skeptical because until very recently, throughout this progressive nation, we started the little litigant in the little court, allowed him to move up for a second trial in a court combining dignity with expense, and from that to a court of review to make sure that the etiquette of procedure has been punctiliously followed, and perhaps after that, if he lived long enough to survive the occasional reversals and remandings, interspersed with interlocutory appeals, the august supreme court of his state might finally assure him that there was nothing more that he could do to his opponent and nothing more for him to fear.

Do not sneer at the poor savage. His poison root procedure is very much better than the vendetta. It is not so far below or so very different from our own system,

for under both the strong stomach is the victor. I have heard lawyers say in entire good faith that our system of endless litigation, with trials, appeals, retrials and successive appeals, was a useful foil for the weakness of human nature; that it kept people from resorting to something worse; by absorbing their energies it prevented violent conduct. Surely as much can be said for poison root procedure, which has the added benefit of economy.

But I submit that self-respecting courts exist to compose differences, to adjust rights, to settle controversies, not to lend themselves to the weakness of human nature when reduced to its meanest elements. Let us ponder again Mr. Justice Hughes' words:

Businesslike Justice

"The judicial quality does not reside in form or ceremony, still less in circumlocution and an avoidance of the pith of the matter. The judicial quality of procedure is found in the impartial hearing and the reasoned determination upon ascertained facts, and it may be speedy, summary, and, as our clients would say, businesslike, without losing its character."

If there be another authority who could be quoted on the same page with Judge Hughes, that authority is Elihu Root. As president of the New York State Bar Association, Mr. Root said:

"I remember hearing Mr. David Dudley Field, during the argument of a cause many years ago, ask Mr. Charles O'Conor a question as to his position concerning the effect of the pleadings in the case. Mr. O'Conor turned, and with that intensity which characterized him (especially when dealing with someone he did not like), he answered: "1 understand that under your code, Mr. Field, the plaintiff comes into court and tells his story like an old woman and the defendant comes in and tells his like another old woman." And that was all the satisfaction Mr. Field got. The reply was intended as a condemnation of the rather simple code of that day, but I am not sure that it was a condemnation. The old woman method doubtless has its disadvantages, but I am not so sure that they are not to be preferred to the subtleties of the special pleader and the code lawyer. If we could substitute for Mr. O'Conor's old woman a man of common sense with a reasonable knowledge of substantive law and a trained sense of materiality and relevancy we should have come very near the chief end and object of all legal procedure. I think it is safe to

say that if we must choose between too much procedure and too little we better have too little.

"I insist that notwithstanding the many just decisions rendered by our courts, when we consider the prevalent delay, the unnecessary expenditure of time and effort

and money, the hindrance of just rights through long-continued defensive litigation without substantial merit, the litigants who abandon their pursuit of justice through weariness or lack of means, the citizens who abandon their rights rather than incur the annoying and injurious incidents of litigation in the effort to enforce them, the

emboldening of the unscrupulous in whose hands delay and difficulty and expense of litigation are weapons with which to force compromise without just grounds-when we consider all these incidents of our present condition we are bound to say that the general interests of the administration of the law require a thorough and radical change.

"The situation cannot be met by merely increasing the judicial force. We have often tried that expedient, but always ineffectually. The only real remedy is to be found in reforming the system."

My recommendation is that the Municipal court of Philadelphia institute a branch court of Conciliation as speedily as possible and require all civil cases involving not more than $100 to be started in this branch. If legislation is required it should be merely permissive and should set no hard and fast rules or limitations. Legislators cannot foresee the future so clearly as to meet new conditions as actual administrators of a law can meet them. The new court should start with all causes up to $100. Since the Conciliation court of Cleveland was established money has sunk to but half its former purchasing power. Claims involving $100 today are no larger than claims of a few years ago involving $50. And the law should not forbid experiment with conciliation in larger causes.

I realize that in the larger causes we reach the point where the lawyer's accustomed prerogative exists. But I cannot apprehend any serious embarrassment. in working out a proper balance between this reform procedure and the necessity for the lawyer to earn a living. No lawver ever earned a decent living trying one hundred dollar lawsuits. The cleverest of us would starve if we had to depend on earnings exclusively from court practice in small causes. It can't be done. As a matter of fact the lawyer has shared with

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the litigants and the public a part of the economic burden of a system which has benefited nobody and which has not much. longer time to endure.

But this is a side issue. I would not predicate the lawyer's attitude on any sordid ground. When we learn that medical societies are opposed to sanitation, to vaccination, to medical laboratories and all the other triumphs of their rapidly advancing profession, then we may be ready to believe that bar associations will incline to look upon the defects of archaic procedure as their special vested interest. We are told that a hundred years ago the shore folk of Newfoundland looked upon shipwrecks as evidence of a benign. providence, and objected strongly to the building of lighthouses. I think the story is exaggerated. But in any event. no modern profession stands in the least danger of trying to advance the interests of its members at the cost of the public.

The lawyer has suffered along with his client in the bad days of judicial procedure. I venture to say that in no other civilized land have lawyers had to work longer hours, or more strenuously or carry greater responsibilities in order to insure a low average income than in these United States. A better administration of justice will undoubtedly contribute to the lawyer's economic status. He too will share in the saving.

I would like to close upon this optimistic note." tic note. While abhorring the constitutional optimist, I do see some promise in our present day. I am not convinced that our judicial system is doomed to become. so utterly unendurable that the people will rise in their wrath and sweep it all away. It is my personal belief that we have passed the worst stage and that we shall muddle through. The denial of justice is a horribly corrosive thing in any society. But our people are trained to patience; they have no precedent for wilfully destructive methods. They do not expect too much from government. They have a sense of humor of the kind displayed by the great Voltaire, when he

said:

"I have never been wholly ruined but

miss, ex officio, every case of this class that does not come up from the Court of Conciliation with a certificate of the commissioners attesting that an effort at a conciliation of the parties has been duly made before them. In cases coming under the jurisdiction of police, admiralty, military and ecclesiastical courts and in a few others, appearance before the Board of Conciliation is not compulsory. In such instances a process of conciliation is the first step in the law court; but it is merely an empty formality. The mode of procedure in the peace court is as simple as it could possibly be. The plaintiff states his case in writing, reciting in plain everyday language the facts upon which he bases his complaint, and what he wants the defendant to do or refrain from doing, and requesting that the latter be cited to meet the plaintiff in the Court of Conciliation to try to reach an agreement in the manner prescribed by law. The senior commissioner writes the court's summons upon the complaint, citing both parties to appear at its next or second sitting, as the case may be. A fee of twenty-five cents is charged for issuing the summons, to which is added fifty cents in the event a conciliation is effected. These comprise all the costs in the court, and also all that this court costs. The commissioners receive no other compensation than these small fees. The litigants must appear in person, except in case of sickness or very pressing business engagements, when the use of a representative is allowed, providing, however, that he is not a practicing attorney. Lawyers are rigidly excluded from the Courts of Conciliation, except, of course, when they attend in their own behalf. If a party fail to appear in person without good excuse, he will be adjudged to pay the costs in the law court even if he should win the case. This rigid rule was designed to induce personal attendance and in practice has shown itself very effective. Either party may submit documentary evidence and if the facts in a case are entangled with essential points in controversy, a continuation may be granted with the consent of both parties. Rules and forms, however, play only a

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secondary part. The character and object of the court make it pre-eminently a forum of common sense unfettered by legal fictions and technicalities. The judges or commissioners discourage any attempt at legal wrangling by either party. They are selected with a particular view to their fitness as peacemakers. While not "learned in the law," in the technical sense of the term, they have, nevertheless, a fair understanding of the fundamental principles of municipal law and a keen sense of equity and material justice. The people regard the office as one of honor and trust rather than of emoluments and have always kept in view that in order to serve its purpose the high, non-partisan character of the institution. must be maintained. In judging of the fitness of candidates they are far more exacting than the statute-not satisfied with merely "good men," as the law requires, they pick the very best men in the community; men of mature years who have earned a reputation for intelligence, conservatism and fairness in their dealings with their fellow men. The office has been kept out of politics. Not even in times of great political excitement, when party lines were rigidly drawn and the regular courts were suspected of not being entirely free from political bias, has there been any complaint against these popular tribunals on this account. On entering upon their duties the judges are sworn honestly and faithfully to strive to reconcile contestants appearing before them, according to their conscience and to their best judgment, on terms that are just and equitable to both parties and in harmony with the spirit of the law of the land. They are not required to be strict constructionists whenever a technical construction, in their judgment, would be inequitable to either of the litigants and obstruct an agreement, they will sacrifice the letter to the spirit of the law in their advice to the parties. The very atmosphere of the lowly courtroom has a softening effect on those who enter it armed for a contest of legal rights. The judges are personally known to them and perhaps their friends, and are recognized as men