The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1897-06-14

THE "CHAIN OF TITLE SNAPPED.
If abuses, once intrenched in custom
or legislation, are difficult things to
remove, reforms that would displace
| them have a hard road to travel be-
fore they get transformed from prop
ositons into statutes. If the Australian
ballot law seemed to be an exception, it
| was only because the abuses of the bal
lot had bred such a widespread and
! deep-seated disgust that the reaction
| favored the reform; and, then, the
reformation had no strong financial in
terest opposing it to preserve it's profits.
The Torrens land title reform, as the
movement is called, which has for it's
purpose the relief Of realty transfers
from the membranes that English
veneration for land as a badge of noble
| birth or aristocracy hung about it, and
| it's ownership from the uncertainty and
| danger that Turk in chains Of title, is
meeting with rather more than the US
ual impediments. In some states, as in
our own, it has failed to get footing for
a hearing on It's merits, while in others
| it has made progress.
| At the city election held This week
in Chicago the question was again sub
mitted to the voters whether the re-
| form should be adopted for Cook coun-
! ty and the response was even more
| nearly unanimous than when the form
er act was submitted. That was de-
| clared to be unconstitutional because it
was held to confer judicial functions on
non-judicial officer; and if there is one
thing that supreme and minor courts
jealousy guard it is their monopoly
Of judicial functions. It Is difficult for
layman to understand why a body,
like a railway commission, for in
stance, composed Of men presumed to
know the one thing they have in
charge, is not quite as able to decide
the questions that come before it as q
court; which, In the performance Of
It's duties, covers the whole domain of
art and science, commerce and me-
chanics; or why registrar, if compe-
| tent, is not as good Judge of the con-
dition of a real estate title as a judge.
But laymen may wonder at this as
they may at many other curiosities and
intricacies of the law without altering
the solid fact that the courts have the
matter In their own hands and what
they say is final.
c1st
| passed an amended act designed to get
around the objections Of the court. and
1t was this the citizens of Chicago well
coined with so general acclaim. 1t ia
noticeable, though, the difference in tbe
latest passage Of the bill through the Hi
nois legislature, from that which its
predecessors met. One recalls the oreie
Of whoops and yells with which the de-
feat Of one Of the bills was greeted by
the majority Of the senate, as If the
senate had made narrow escape from
some calamity. Then the interests that
thought themselves assailed by the sim.
plification had fought the measure from
start to finish, and it was their ma
jority, secured by measures that they
would not care to be made public. that
did the rioting Of jollifcation. This
| time the bill passes with so little oppo-
sition that it's course was hardly no.
tlced. Perhaps the abstracters have
discovered that they will not be killed
and, perhaps, the legislators have been
instructed by the popular reception of
the act. Anyway the Torrens plan has
come to stay in Cook county
In Ohio it is travelling the same up
hill route. An act similar to that
adopted in Illinois was enacted only TO
meet the same fate at the hands Of