The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-07-10
EDITORIAL PAGE OF THE EVENING FARMER
THE MOB AND THE RECALL

A typical statement of the con
 servative attitude toward the recall
 of judges is made in Bench and Bar
 a publication for lawyers. It is the
 stock allegation that judges must be deaf to popular clamor' and that be- 1 cause they are deaf the .'mob'' has to the effect that judges must en- force the law as they find it, and no; be swayed by. passion, or prejudice mere trite stuff, which everybody
 knows, understands and believes. Then there is the usual inference that judges have been enforcing ethe
 law as they found it.
 Hut recall legislation is founded
 upon the, argument that the judges
 have not been doing any such thing,
 that they have been profoundly mod flying the law. ignoring the law, re- creating the law to suit themselves
 They are not charged with having been swayed by public clamor, but they are charged with having been swayed by the still, small voice of privilege. The evidence upon which the people act is largely derived from the opinions of judges who have heard the voice, but have refused to obey it.
 Stupid is the man or unconscious of the means by which public opinion is formed, who does not know that the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States abrogating the in- come tax, was shock ito every fn- formed man in the nation. It was inevitable that the facts relating to that decision should become com monly known. It was equally cer- tain that the mind of the nation would be profoundly modified in its view of tue Judiciary and the func- tions of the Judiciary.
 So it is in the recenr decision un- der the Sherman law, in which the court is openly accused by one of its own members of legislating to make a law which meets. the views of the court.
 Who, reading the decision of the Court in the case in question, can reach any conclusion except that the Court has sounded the death knell of competition in the United States, hastening the extinction of America's proudest product, the small manufac- turer and business man.
 The court found law devoted to the principle of competition made by a Congress that believed competi- tion sufficient, to maintain social tus- tice in wages and prices.
 . But the law that remains, inter- preted in the light of court law, might have been drawn by Marx to hasten the economic crisis which he predicted.
 Such are the object lessons which have educated the American people to their present attitude toward the courts.
 These lessons have been exempli- fled by many others, including al multitude of decisions by state courts.
 Even in Connecticut the highest court found little difficult in judi cially destroying that portion of the Constitution which forbade the sal- 1 aries of public servants to be in- creased during the period of service of the beneficiaries.
 It is true that during the transi- ton period embraced in the French overtime. But the times were rude. 1 And how small was the suffering thus judicially caused compared with | the sufferings, the iniquitfes and the | wrongs in the thousand years that | had preceded, all inflicted upon . patient and industrious people.
 But it is easier for some to shed | tears for kings. There is more pathos to some in Marie Antoinette, with her royal robes and girlish | ways, than in a million of half starv- ed peasantry. which constituted the 'mob' of her days
 The writer for Bench and Bari might have spared the allusion, since l 1t is the stock reference in such cases and so painfully familiar
 The legitimate lesson. of the French revolution is that it is better to redress wrongs peacefully with the ballot, and by the lawful recon struction of institutions than by vio- lence.