Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1907-08-30
Alton 3. Parker and the Common Law

(Phladelphia Press.)
Mr.. Alton Is. Parker, eX-jugde and
eN-presidential candidate. in his adj
dress at Portland, Me, as president IF
the American Bar Association, falls
back on the Constitution and the COM
mon law as the remedy for all evils in
trusts, railroads, rebates and graft.
II we will only do nothing but wait
the Constitution and the common law
will pull us through. This is exactly
the advice Judge Parkers Democratic
predecessors were giving on the slavery
question some sixty years ago. Things
are doubtless very bad His prede-
cessors of the same party, the same
Temperament and the same habit of
mind were saying: 1--WE admit the great
evils of slavery, but wait, be claim, pa
tient and don't agitate, and the Con-
Stitution and the common law will see
you through"
History had its answer. 1t is now
clear that if some one had insisted on
action earlier, war and all its untold
evils would not have come later. M
one gave worse advice two generations
ago than men like Judge Parker, who
urged doing nothing and offering no
new rCnidics for old evils.
What finally had to be done was IL
use old powers in the Constitution for
new eXigencies, and the common law
was adapted to new needs by new leg
islation and new decisions, as it must he
now and as it always has been at each
stage of social or national development
The common law" as Judge Parker
understands it, has been tried and it
has failed to prevent the evils of monop-
oily and combination which the com
mon law itself long since recognized
in its antique phrase as 'regrating
and forestaling." Constitutions, State
and Federal. as men on the bench like
Judge Parker have interpreted them,
have given the manipulating managers
of corporations the powers used in the
iniGuitouS New York street railroad
mergers, now revealed, in the evasion
of the New York decision against the
Sugar Trust. in which Judge Parker
shared and in all the various schemes
by which the trusts. thr0ugh freight
rebates, have bled the railroads and
ruined competition.
Lawyers like Alton y. Parker, sound
honest, learned and well-intentioned,
bankers who find fault with Roosevelt
railroad officers who never had the
courage to resist rebates they knew
We're ruinous, all unite in the advice
now given.
Such forget and do not see that, as
often before, our system of law. of jul
dicial decisions. Of legislation and of ad-
miristration, faces evils long endured
which need new reforms and novel
remedies. or worse will come. 1nsen-
sibly there has grown immunity for
acts sometimes illegal but always
fraudulent, of corporations and of
those who manage them.
In the past. when constitutional pow
ers We're needed to cure new evils they
have always been found in the Federal
Constitution. They will be this time.
That ancient instrument is Just as libala
to construction" as when John Mar
shall took hold of it and found there an
entire arsenal of Federal powers. AS
for the common law. the best thing
about it is that for six centuries it has
grown and changed to meet new de-
mands This is just what is happening
TO the common law now.