THE LEGISLATIVE MILL
Jones, Chester Lloyd
The Legislative Mill By CHESTER LLOYD JONES THIS IS a legislative year. In all but half a dozen states and territ©ries the wise men have gathered at the capitols to try to bring up to date the...
...patches on the old, dust-covered, threadbare legal fabric...
...But if the East lives under laws outgrown, the West defies the laws of mathematics and seeks to protect us against all harm not only in our waking but our sleeping hours...
...This is far indeed from the standard which our states formerly set themselves when the maxim was "that government is best which governs least...
...The right of the people to control the making of their laws is of no value unless it mean the right to have them made well...
...Our people are no longer free to choose at will...
...These may marry white men but not negroes...
...in 1909 over 22,000...
...The result:—law becomes a patch-quilt, gaudier than any our grandmothers ever made...
...Laws upon laws pile up around us every session, which few read and the real meaning of which still fewer comprehend...
...Perhaps we have never quite reached the confusion of mind that led to the proposal by a Queen's Counsel in 1865 of a law that "Every dog found trespassing on enclosed land unaccompanied by the registered owner of such dog or other person, who shall, on being asked, give his true name and address, may be then and there destroyed by such occupier or by his orders...
...He does not have time to see whether it is one which can properly be thus prevented...
...Never has the need of such a standard been more evident than now...
...The bills which follow are not from the harvest of bills preposed—preposterous measures of that character abound in every section— these are the bills formally and solemnly enacted into law...
...Even in marriage relations we find that our legislatures wish to give us more and more directien...
...a conglomerate of the needs of yesterday and of a century ago...
...This is work much different from the law-making of an earlier day...
...What, we may ask, if the apprentice be a Jew and is the Bible to be one used by Catholic or Protestant...
...For generations the fight of good government was for the recognition of the people's will in the making of laws...
...Far in the northwest, progressive Oregon still fears the com-petition of the negro, for the constitution says, "no free negro nor mulatto not residing in Oregon at the time of the adoption of the constitution shall come to or be within the state," and a law provides that all who bring them in or employ them shall be punished...
...The legislature of Arizona catches the conservation mania and provides (1909) that a horticultural commission be created with power "to employ an etymologist (sic) and establish horticultural districts...
...We have long poked fun at the Englishman who made a law providing that the penalty in a certain act should be divided between the informant and the poor of the parish—though the penalty mentioned was fourteen year' deportation...
...And the end—who knows...
...Look to Our Laurels...
...We pass from an agricultural to an industrial state, from flatboats to steamboats, from mule carts to aeroplanes, and the law trudges after, far, far behind...
...time after time the hope is disappointed...
...All this was easy in the days when the knottiest question with which the legislature dealt was how to stop the use of highways for pastures or how to make the farmer keep his fences "horse high, hog tight, bull strong...
...Humanitarian instincts seem to be strong in Arizona, at least the last legislature has passed a law that "any person or persons pulling or plucking the feathers or plumes or any feather or plume from any ostrich without the consent of the owner or possessor of the same shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction thereof shall be fined not less than $50 nor more than $300...
...Our thousands of legislators, work as they will, in sessions long drawn out or in which all the work is done in rush and confusion, because the term of the meeting is limited to sixty or ninety days, can only add a new piece here, mend a rent there, but never clothe the state in garments which reflect the present, not the past...
...The law in New York and Wisconsin holds that a master, when the apprentice is discharged, must give him, as a final "benefit and allowance," "a new bible...
...Those who laugh at the failures of others have often never tried to build themselves...
...Laws must be made clear, plain so the layman may understand...
...It must be something which will make the strong arm of the state reach out to the citizen to guide him unerringly toward this end or away from that...
...Law-making is a Difficult Task IT IS ALL VERY WELL to sneer at the mistakes, the vagaries and well-intentioned follies of the men who make our laws...
...The statesman fresh from the counter or the farm faces a work he never tried before...
...He tries to bring up to present needs laws which he never saw and the application of which he but partly understands...
...This is the foundation of all reform,—through legal means to make the laws speak with no uncertain voice and to make the penalties they give easy of enforcement...
...Missouri ten years ago solemnly enacted that "no person or persons or corporation engaged in the brewing or manufacture of beer or other malt liquor shall use any substance, material or chemical in the manufacture of beer or other malt liquors other than pure hops or pure barley malt or wholesome yeast or rice...
...An amendment proposing the repeal of this clause was defeated June 4, 1909 by a vote of 19,074 to 19,999 in spite of the fact that it must be evident to anyone familiar with reform of government that the clause is absolutely unconstitutional...
...memories of an age past and forgotten—un used, outgrown laws suited for a simpler age which cumber the statute books and make the work of every session look like a series of gay...
...Long ago the framers of the Vermont Constitution included a provision that the legislature should "consist of persons most noted for wisdom and justice...
...Even more numerous are the bills ground out every year which, due perhaps to the rush at the close of the session, appear on the statute books dismembered, confused, meaningless or ludicrous...
...It is no easy task to sketch the frame work of a law:—to violate none of the architect's rules We have prescribed in our constitutions, state and federal, to make the law clear so that he who runs may read and so to adjust its different parts that it may run like a well-planned machine...
...Just across the Delaware, in Jersey, until 1893 it was still unlawful to sell newspapers on Sunday, to sell milk, to ride, drive or walk for recreation, and a step farther north—in Connecticut —no man could take a street car for a picnic in the country on Sunday afternoon for no street cars were allowed to run upon the Sabbath day...
...Far from this is our present standard...
...So Mother Mississippi prohibits by law any marriage between Chinese and her white children even if the real Chinese in question were only a great grandparent of one of the lovers...
...Rotation in office, putting the premium on inexperience, hasty law-making;—these mean bad laws and many of them...
...There are a host of curious legal survivals...
...The ratio of the diameter to the circumference of the circle shall no longer be 3.1416 but shall be reckoned 3.15 "because it is easier to calculate...
...The good law must be one which not even the inertia of a government clerk can still...
...But it is always easier to criticise a house than to build one...
...Perhaps our industrious legislatures of 1911 will make a total of 25,000...
...Anyone can frame a law which means well and in the hands of an efficient officer even a poor law may do good work...
...Some Statutory Oddities TAKE, FOR EXAMPLE, a few of the survivals of a time we have outgrown...
...This abuse is met by that remedy, only to find that like some old man of the sea the same evil appears in another form which in turn must have a new law...
...So complex are the questions to be met that the law-maker loses sight of the general problem—the cause which should be treated—and devotes himself to treating symptoms...
...No one need wonder if the simple citizens whom we elect to make our laws flounder in the complex mass of acts built up by generation after generation...
...Senator "Bob," as usual, is ready to side with the under dog.—Oshkosh Northwestern...
...Such race legislation is not exceptional but can be found throughout the south and to a less extent in the far western states...
...Greater and greater are our needs for law, higher and higher the speed of the legislative mill...
...Thus in the great state of Indiana it is solemnly proposed "to simplify measurements...
...Further, a requirement harking back to the time when the master feared the competition of the apprentice: he must not make the apprentice contract that he will not set up for himself "in any particular place, house, shop or cellar...
...Steadily the number of our public and private acts increases...
...but, unlike the mill of God, it grinds not slowly nor exceeding small...
...In lawmaking, most difficult of all the arts and sciences, we take no premium on experience...
...Now legislation is quite another problem...
...In North Carolina Chinese may marry whom they please, but not so Croatan Indians, who are supposed to have the blood of Virginia Dare, the first white child born in America...
...In the year October 1, 1902, to October 1, 1903, 14,394 laws and resolutions were passed...
...But the real problem is to make the law strong, not in the hand of the best officer, but in the hands of the poorest...
...Think, too, of the fear of gunplay which in Kentucky inspires a law—Bill 251 of the Legislature of 1900—which declares that "it shall be unlawful for any person to fire or discharge at random any deadly weapon whether said weapon be loaded or unloaded,"—yes, this is mother's warning, for it is always the unloaded gun that kills...
...What can we do to face the flood of laws, rigid in spots yet always changing...
...Much must the homeless public thank the motherly states of Oregon and Oklahoma, for in Oregon the law tucks each to bed beneath sheets which must be nine feet long, and rising in Oklahoma the breakfast gleams in sparkling china without a notch or crack—for does not the law provide that he who serves his guests in cracked dishes is guilty of a misdemeanor...
...From the days when the Quaker Sabbath ruled in Pennsylvania, the law speaks saying no man shall labor on the Sabbath day, with the result that in a recent case in Williamsport a woman has been fined for washing dishes after the Sunday dinner...
...Legislatures meet to make the law fit the facts, courts strain the law to cover parts uncovered, but the legal clothes of the nation never fit...
...Our economic conditions change...
...Time after time it seems as if just one more act will give relief...
...The apprentice never can equal the work of the experienced journeymen...
...IN ANY CASE, however, we must look to our laurels...
...SENATOR LA FOLLETTE is planning to defend the right of mail clerks to organize, in face of the opposition of Postmaster General Hitchcock...
...Every evil he comes to think must be met by law...
...The fight of good government now is to make it possible to have that will articulate, not a confused rumble from which only occasionally there issues a clear command...
...Was this a plot of some few wily prohibitionists or must the courts hold in Missouri that water is neither "substance, material or chemical...
...Banks must be supervised, corporations chartered, railroads regulated...
...Untrained, without previous experience, they turn to any new found cure...
...In all but half a dozen states and territ©ries the wise men have gathered at the capitols to try to bring up to date the laws that govern us —for, of all sciences the law is the greatest laggard...
...The task is difficult, for much of the old must be discarded before the new garment can be made up to date...
...Nor should we wonder if the work is poorly done...
Vol. 3 • May 1911 • No. 18
