Courts All Right

Detkoit, Aug. 29.- Immediately upon the reassombling of the American Bar association Judge William H. Taft, of tho Unitel States circuit court, bcgan the delivery of the annual address of the association. He said in part that within the last four years the governors of five or more states had thought it proper in their official messages to declare that the federal courts had seized jurisdiction not rightly theirs and exercised it to the detriment of the republic, and to urge their respective legislatures to petition congress for remedial legislation to prevent future usurpation. The principal charge against the federal courts which an examination of these documents disclosed was that the courts had flagran tly usurped jurisdiotion, first to protect corporations and perpetúate their many abuses, and second to oppress and destroy the power of organized labor. Has no Objection to Fair Oitici.sm. The right and opportunity freely and publicly to criticise judicial action was benefleial in proportion as it was fair and dispassionately discriminating and based on a knowledge of sound legal principies. While professional criticism was highly useful, non-professional criticism was by no means without its uses, even if it were occompanied by a direct attack on the judicial fairness and motives of the occupants of the bench. He believed that the governors who were the chief accusers of the federal judiciary woro merely putting into language the hostile feeling of certain of their constituents toward the federal courts, and but for such feeling the criticisms would hardly have been uttered. He (Juoted the enforcement of the "fugitive slavo law" before abolition, and the protection of the negro in his electoral and civil rights after that event as historical instances showing how federal courts might beaubjectedto mostsevere criticisni without just grounds. Reforms Must Come From the People. The marvelous material development of the last two genorations, ho said, had been effected by the organization and enforced co-operation of simple elements that for a long time previous had been separately used. The impersonal character of corporations afiorded a freedom from restraint in the corrupt use of money to secure undue business advantages from legislative and executive sources, and thus many of the political agencies of the people had become tainted. The prospect of ill-gocten gains attracted the dishonest trickster into politics and debauched the weak, while the honest and courageous were often driven into private life. The reforms of such wrongs must come from the people, not from the courts. Corporations Are Indispensable. "In spite of these well-known evils," said the judge, "nothing can be clearer to a calm, intelligent thinker than that under conditions of modern society, corporations are indispensable, both to the material progress of this oountry and to the maintenance of what we have. The evils must be remedied, but not by destroying one of the greatest instruments for good that social man has devised. While socialism has not obtained much of a foothold in this country, schemes which are socialistic in nature are accepted plnnks in the platform of a political party, their underlying principie being that it is the duty of the government to equaliüo the inequalities which the rights of free contract and private property have brought about and to afford occupation and sustenance to the poor by an outlay, derived, as f ar as possible, from the rich.