Judge Johnson On Philippines

JUDGE JOHNSON ON PHILIPPINES

Address Before the State Bar Association

HE TRIED 1500 CASES

In Two Years on the Bench--State Bar Wish to Check Divorce Evil

-----

Detroit, Mich., June 20.--Fully 250 lawyers gathered together in the dining hall of the Cadillac last evening to attend the banquet tendered the members of the Michigan Bar association by the Bar association of Detroit.

The chief speech of the evening was delivered by Judge E. Finley Johnson, judge of the supreme court of the Philippines. In his story of the manner in which justice is dealt out, he said:

"Many cases were handed down from the Spanish regime. In one province I found seventy-four prisoners, forty of whom did not know what they were called for. I called them into court and simply dismissed them. One man was kept in jail twenty-three years and finally tried and given a sentence of six months in jail. last March all the American judges had made so much progress that they were up with the dockets.

"I will say frankly that today the average Filipino is not qualified to sit on the jury, but I feel that the time is not far distant when they will be qualified."

Judge Johnson said that in the two years that he has been on the bench he has disposed of 1,500 cases and sentenced twenty-seven men to death. Two of these were formerly executioners under the Spanish government.

The Negro Question.

The afternoon meeting developed into a controversy on the negro question, which was caused by a paper by Alfred Russell, discussing important decisions of the United States supreme court. Russell discussed the recent decision of the supreme court wherein the majority refused to give the colored man his right of franchise in Alabama, in the case involving the right of the court of equity to interfere, and declared that the decision was correct, he stirred up a good-sized hornets' nest.

D. A. Straker, the colored lawyer, made a vigorous speech, condemning the decision, and was loudly applauded.

The resolutions were to the effect that

"Whereas, The divorce evil bils fair to become a menace to the welfare of society, and that through the co-operation of the bench and bar much can be done towards remedying this evil. It is therefore

"Resolved, That we deprecate the indiscriminate granting of divorces; that we believe lawyers owe a duty to the noble calling with which they are affiliated to use, in the first instance, their best energies towards inducing a reconciliation between the parties and to advise the filing of a bill only as a last resort."

The report of the secretary showed a present membership of 613. The salary of the secretary was increased from $100 to $200.

A Poor Man's Lawyer.

Judge Seymour D. Thompson of New York was the principal speaker at the morning session. He spoke of damage law and damage lawyers, and while criticizing the overzealousness of lawyers to chase up damage suits and soak the big corporations, he said the damage lawyer was, after all, a benefactor to the poor man who did not have the money to start his case and could only secure justice by "divying up" with his attorney.

Judge Thompson took occasion to denounce union labor, likening union men to "the ravaging hordes which poured out of frozen Europe into Rome, demanding tribute and getting it, and then returning for more."