The Leavenworth echo. [volume] (Leavenworth, Wash.) 1904-current, 1909-04-16
ROOSEVELT ON JUDGES.
And Working Men-A Leaf from the Book
of His Experience

In The Outlook of March IS Ex-
President Roosevelt gives the public a
leaf from the book OF his experience.
He tells how he entered politics with
prejudice against laboring men and
against those who plead the cause Of
the toilers. He says he had studied
what was then considered orthodox
political economy and that his asso-
ciates were for the most part lawyers
or business men Of wealth who quite
sincerely took the ordinary wealthy
business mans view Of labor matters. +"
He describes his connection with an
investigation which opened his eyes to
the unsanitary conditions surrounding
cigar-woTks, and how he joined in
reporting a bill for the lawyers Of the
various employers and tenement house
owners against the law and he and a
few representatives of the cigarmakers'
union in favor of the law. He contin-
ues his story by citing the contest
before the court in which the judges
took the sides Of the employers and
tenement house owners:
The judges, as was quite natural,
shared the feelings of the classes from
which they were drawn, and with which
they associated. The decision went
against the jewellers in the tenement
houses. Anything like an effective
reformation OF tenement house con-
ditions was thereby deferred for fifteen
or twenty years, and during that time
men, women and children were guar
anteed their liberty to tester in sodden
misery"
His reason for entering upon this
narrative is given as follows:
My reason for relating this anec-
dote is because from that day to this
I have felt an ever-gowing conviction
of the need of having on the bench
men, who, in addition to being learned
in the law and upright, shall
possess broad understanding of and
sympathy with their countrymen as
a whole, so that the questions of hui
mainly and OF social justice shall not
be considered by them as wholly in
ferior to the defense of vested rights
or the upholding of liberty Of contract.
A hair-splitting refinement in decisions
may result in as much damage to the
community as if the judge were ac-
tually corrupt. Freedom Of contract
should be permitted only so far as is
compatible with the best interests Of
the community; and when vested rights
become intrenched wrongs, they
should be overturned. I do not for
one moment believe that the mass Of
our judges are actuated by any but
worthy motives. Nevertheless, l do
believe that they often signally fail
to protect the laboring man and the
laboring mans widow and children
in their just rights, and that heart
breaking and pitiful injustice too often
results there from; and this primarily
because our judges lack either the op-
portunity or the power thoroughly to
understand the working mans and
working womans position and vital
needs.
Mr.. Roosevelt has rendered a ser
vice in calling attention to the fact
that judges are simply human and that
their sympathies must be taken into
account, as we'll as their legal know
ledge. No one who has watched the
course of judicial procedure needs to
be told that man who has spent his
life time in the service OF a predatory
corporation, defending the corporation
against suits just or unjust and wearing
out litigants- as some Of the great
corporations have been in the habit Of
doing-cannot enter without bias upon
the discharge Of the duties Of the
judicial position, especially if his ap-
pointment has been secured by the
influence Of his clients. 1t is not nee
essary to believe that such men inten-
tionally violate their oath or purposely
do injustice, but the influence OF their
environment and of their associates is
likely to cloud their vision as Mr..
Roosevelt suggests.
In the late campaign the papers
nearest to the trusts were constantly
u n n