Elmore County Republican. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1910-1915, 1912-03-09
Rev. John A. Peake.

Business and the Bench" Although
of considerable length, it is desery-
ing of attentive reading A startling
statement like the following is a
sample.
1T is the nest obvious of meta
IIcIs to say that in many a state
li,igauts who approach the court
house find that there is railway
sldetrack leading into the courtroom
ard that the locomotive blocks the
CoCr To justice"
How to win in California.-"Th There
WAS a case coming on for trial in
tie lover court at Los Angeles, in
which the Southern Pacific was a
parry. Stay wrote to Mckinley in
Herlin's name: 1.-THE Supreme Court
sices in conversation with me to-
day all seen ed to be of the opinion
that a paragraph (referring to a
certain pleading in the lower COURT
should lie amended so as to state
the facts. The justices,
without exception, We're Of the opin-
ion that the appointment Of a re
ceiyer would be reversed by direct
appeal, though it might not be sub
ject to collateral attack
Here was the Supreme Courc of the
state, the final arbiter in dispute.
advising the litigant how to proceed
in order to win.
After this survey of the intimacy
of California courts and railways, one
naturally recalls that sentence in
Rooseyelt's letter to Wee President
Sherman, dated Octohet 8, 1906
told you that he could buy ~ the
Judiciary"
The writer deals with the right Of
personal examination" the fellow
servant doctrine. Judge Taft's de
cision for the employe; social briber i.
with the hand of master, -
In the same issue What A Dem.
ocracy Would be Like by Richard
S. Childs, Is a very interesting advo-
cacy Of the English Short Ballot III
stead of the present cumbersome, Pc !.
picking system; he says. Our cit
izenship could operate the simple En-
glish Short Ballot mechanism with
one hand, and with eyes shut, and
make as excellent a job of selfgov
eminent as the Englshman does "
Our relative success with Commission
Government proves this. Given the
task OF selecting and dominating five
conspicuous officials instead of raft
of obscure and irresponsible ones,
1t was monstrous Such things,I felt
American cities have been getting re-
suits. Commission government is far
from a perfect plan, and it only
marks transition toward better
things, but it has that vital Short
Ballot and is accordingly the first
instance of practical democratic gov
eminent We have had in our cities
fer half century.
The trenchant pen of Julian Leav-
lit in the American Magazine gives
us ''Ihe Man in the Cage" 1t takes
the lid off our brutal prison system,
which in about one half the states
would disgrace barbarism.-Ed
when | first began my investi-
cations into prison life and labor |
believed, as most of the readers of
this magazine probably believe, that
the grosser cruelties of the cage wer
thing of the past. | was familiar
with the prison history of the past
century, when the lease and the con
tract systems held sway everywhere.
In those days scarcely a year passed
without its sickening scandal Men, |
women and children were systematic
in the mad drive for prison profits
There was no evil too wicked to be |
inflicted upon those creatures who
had fallen under the heel of society |
1t was monstrous. Such things, felt, |
could not exist today. And in this |
belief | was confirmed by all the
students of penology to whom | talk
ed.
Genial wardens assured me that |
the reign of brutalitarianism was
over. Kindly penologists assured me
that the reign of humanitarianism |
was already ushered in. Some even |
believed that the pendulum had swung
too far in that direction
''And yet when ] began to probe /
beneath these pleasant surface phe
nomena ! discovered that prisons
were still prisons. In nearly half the
states of the Union today the basic
industrial conditions in the prison
world are virtually the same as they