JUDSON KING: LAW DOCTOR
Marsh, Rhuddlan
Judson King: Law Doctor By RHUDDLAN MARSH HE IS a born doctor of laws. Not an LL. D.—but a sure enough practitioner; a person who gives professional attention to sick bills and statutes. He is...
...Usually they are blessed with a lengthening train of warm friends who serve to make life sweet, and of bitter ehemies who serve to make life interesting...
...It was thus throughout the whole time we were in Switzerland together...
...The League maintains a bureau of accurate information on direct methods of government and extends active aid to state and municipal organizations fighting to establish them...
...IT WAS NOT in Switzerland, however, that King got the impetus which made him a doctor of sick laws and a mender of weak-kneed constitutions...
...There are, however, certain compensations for these rolling stone individuals who are chronic crusaders-who keep their armor on, or their grips packed, as the case may be, ready for any eventuality that may call them to battle...
...He is not an orator, in the spread-eagle sense that connotes long, high-sounding periods, done in high-falutin' rhetoric, but he has a way about him that makes his talks tremendously effective...
...Later, after breaking into the newspaper game somewhere in Texas, he went to Toledo, where he became identified with the reform movement led by Samuel M. Jones, and finally editor of The Independent Voter...
...His specialty is a trepanning operation for the removal of "Jokers" from vicious bills—thus making them, at the worst, innocuous...
...And his enemies know—nobody better than they...
...John R. Haynes, of Los Angeles...
...Two national conventions on popular government have been held which brought together "live wires" from all over the country for vital discussion and planning...
...He made his school a self-governing little republic...
...THIS success has been due not merely to his skill in doctoring statutes, but also to his remarkable effectiveness as a fighting campaigner...
...King's penchant for making and mending things is constitutional...
...In his youth he worked at a trade of some kind—as a cabinet maker, or upholsterer, or something of that sort In like fashion his shelves and pigeon-holes are stuffed with implements for making or mending bills and laws...
...He felt that he had found the true shrine of democracy, and he was uplifted accordingly...
...In his newspaper and magazine work the same characteristic quality which marks his speaking is in evidence...
...Frank P. Walsh, the militant chairman of the Industrial Relations Commission...
...He tinkers with amazing effectiveness too—like a professional...
...He has also a keen sense of dramatic values...
...democratic scholars and University men, such as Prof...
...He is equally adept at putting teeth into flabby bills and aft drawing the fangs of bills of sinister strength...
...C. B. Kegley, of the Progressive Granges...
...Samuel Gompers, of the American Federation of Labor...
...He has been in on the making of various I. and R. acts and of three or four state constitutions...
...Returning from Europe in the fall of 1908, Mr...
...King entered the national field, engaging in the fight for the I. and R. in Wisconsin, Arkansas, Arizona and elsewhere and finally becoming the executive secretary of the National Popular Government League, which is today the most powerful organization in the country devoted to the single end of furthering the cause: of true popular government...
...When the ancestral "Horns of Uri" were brought forward to be carried at the head of the procession—enormous ox-horns with the stamp of immemorial age upon their glistening cones—King was exalted and enthralled as is the devout worshiper by the lifting of the Host...
...It was Switzerland that convinced him of the soundness and practicability of the democratic idea and it was there that he got much of the backing in hard fact which has made him such an effective advocate of the initiative and referendum, but the bias that sent him to Switzerland was, I dare say, born in him...
...He was at that time working his way through the University of Michigan...
...Lewis J. Johnson of Harvard, Prof...
...He knows all the ins and outs of "practical politics" and on the stump he has unique power...
...It would appear that his efforts have not been without a measure of success...
...He has a vein of rare humor in his make-up, and he seldom speaks without turning this vein to advantage...
...He is cordially hated by the standpatters of the various communities in which he has practiced his profession, and, indeed, by standpatters everywhere who keep track of the campaign for popular government...
...These were the battle horns that had stricken terror to the heart of Charles the Bold five hundred years before...
...He owns no real estate...
...From all over the nation come proposed bills for criticism, and usually there are some weak spots to be pointed out and the remedy suggested...
...His bias was promptly evidenced there by the system of school government which he inaugurated...
...King was born in Waterford, Pennsylvania...
...His style is snappy and to the point, never labored and never academic...
...So runs a recent league bulletin, sent to members— "A state won for the I. and R. is worth 100 new books, 100,000 tracts and 1,000,000 speeches...
...For the past six or seven years he has been a peripatetic specialist on the initiative and referendum...
...ONE Sunday morning in May, 1908, King and I stood in the quaint little square in Altdorf, Switzerland, Where William Tell, so they say, shot the apple from the head of his son, and there we watched the forming of the procession that was to move thence to the meadow, south of town, where was to be held that day the annual Landesgemeinde of Canton Uri—a county congress as simple and fundamental as a New England town meeting and of eight hundred years standing...
...At least they do not beJudson King: Law Doctor (Continued from page 5.) come moss-backs...
...His files bulge with precise data on the initiative and referendum, the short ballot, preferential voting, proportional representation, the commission form of municipal government and like features of applied democracy, and whenever the old battle between democracy and privilege is joined anew anywhere within the limits of continental United States he throws an armful of the instruments of his profession into a suitcase and is off to the firing line...
...The personnel of the officers and members of this League is significant, being representative of practically every element in the nation actively for direct methods of government...
...John P. White, of the United Mine Workers —all of which great organizations have by convention resolutions affiliated with the League...
...Congressmen Kent, Crosser, and Lewis...
...Certainly he had it when I first knew him in Toledo, a dozen years ago, when he was identified with the nonpartisan movement led by "Golden Rule" Jones...
...Other prominent members of the League are Chas...
...and Miss Janet Richards, the current events lecturer...
...Whenever a vital campaign is on where help is needed in the Way of speakers of national prominence, of literature, or of practical trench work in vote-getting, there goes the Executive Secretary, perhaps with a corps of speakers, to mix in the fray and "put it over...
...Edward A. Ross, of Wisconsin, Prof...
...Reverently he followed them in the march to the meadow, and while I, like a latter day Zacc-heus, ran ahead to climb an apple tree by the roadside to gain a point of vantage for snapshot work, he trudged along with the marshalled voters of Uri, eager to sense to the full the novel savor of that elementary object lesson in pure democracy...
...Jerome H. Raymond, of Evanston, and Prof...
...The League is non-partisan and its object is to afford "A permanent, central organization to promote constitutional machinery and establish the control of government by the people...
...S. Barret, President of the National Farmer's Union...
...When that fight was lost he went to Switzerland, where he studied Swiss democracy during the Spring and Summer of 1908, incidentally traveling in Germany, France, Belgium and the United Kingdom...
...As field secretary of the Ohio Direct Legislation League, he went through the first Ohio initiative and referendum campaign...
...His achievements have been almost wholly anonymous, but his friends know what he has done...
...Among them are United States Senators Owen, who is president, Clapp, Norris, Chamberlain and Kenyon...
...So I climbed mountains and threaded passes alone, while King talked with the people of Switzerland, talked with the president of the republic and with street car conductors, with cabinet officers and street sweepers, getting first hand the mass of information on the application of the initiative and referendum which was to prove so invaluable to him in his I. and R. campaigns in the States...
...Drinking deep, as it were, at the very well-spring of modern democracy, King was fairly intoxicated with the spirit of the thing...
...Gilbert E. Roe, the New York lawyer...
...Herbert Quick, the editor and author...
...My memory of the sheer joy he took in the proceedings of the open air legislature is among the" most vivid and pleasing of the souvenirs of my early association with Mr...
...No philanthropic millionaire has endowed or supplied a "foundation" for this work...
...Judson King, rolling stone, peripatetic master-builder of statutes and constitutions, apostle of fundamental democracy, has enough such friends and enemies scattered throughout this country to establish well the fact that his fight has not been in vain...
...has no "financial interests"—of all the rolling stones I know of he has gathered the least moss...
...There is no "angel" back of it and its modest budget comes from the individual contributions of those who know, as the mass does not, the sinistor and powerful efforts being made to either strangle or sidetrack the efforts of the people to have more power in government...
...S. R. Hatton of Western Pennsylvania...
...King was so absorbed in the wonder of democracy as exemplified in that great little republic, that he couldn't even see the scenery...
...All that day, while the assembled citizens of the Canton, ringed in their green amphitheater, discussed a proposed law providing for bovine life insurance, designed to protect the farmer whose cow is killed by accident, King was a-tip-toe with excitement of the keenest kind...
...Carl Vrooman, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture...
...He came to the Middle West while a youngster, and began his career as a country school teacher in the woods of upper lichigan...
...JUDSON KING has been "in politics" for a decade now, yet he has never run for any office, not, till within the past two years perhaps, has he ever remained in one place long enough to be classed as a permanent resident...
...It is concerned with the minor things of this world as well as with the laws of commonwealths...
...Herbert Quick once said of him that "he doesn't make a speech, he puts on a sketch...
...His very desk is literally a tool-chest—its drawers bristling with magazine drills, hacksaws, punches, screw-drivers and various nondescript combination implements—and if anything in the shape of furniture or machinery breaks down within the purview of his operations, he stops short in his dissertation on fundamental democracy, whips out the necessary tool or tools and proceeds to tinker...
...distinguished civilians such as Dr...
...His name is Judson King...
...Indeed, as a public speaker he is quite sui generis...
Vol. 7 • November 1915 • No. 11
