anything sometimes in six months, especially if everybody is to discuss the question. Now with over 11,000 members in the Association, what could we do here in open discussion of subjects that should be brought before the Association? I say the idea is all right, but practically it will not work. I think experience has shown that, and the mere fact that the institution has grown in the direction that it has is proof that it is a necessity to conduct its business in the manner in which it is conducted. I do not believe that this Association is ready for an open discussion of all questions on the floor at each meeting. I do not believe we could ever get along with it, and especially if a larger percentage of the members should attend the meetings. With this view in mind I certainly would not be in accordance with the amendments that have been suggested by the gentleman from Alabama.

Harry S. Mecartney, of Illinois:

I am glad that the Open Forum idea has been started and that an appeal has been made to the membership at large to do something to extend the influence of this great Association. Nobody has any influence who merely has brain, without equipment. No collective body of men amounts to much in these times if it simply suggests, resolves, and discusses.

This Association, I have felt, for 15 or 16 years, ought to change its methods and accept the call to a greater and more constant service. I do not mean to underestimate the amount of work and time devoted to the Association every year by members of committees; but we are talking by the law of averages. And this Association is having merely the influence due to the average membership attending its meetings. Therefore, I am not spurred by the increase, or worried over the non-increase, in membership. There is influence in members, but there is ten times the influence in work and deliberation and service. You will have your members if you create such an ideal of service. In my judgment the reason most of us are not making much progress in the profession is that we do not do enough work. Let us apply ourselves to that condition.

In 1906 I felt so earnestly about this matter, that at the particular suggestion of George R. Peck, who was then the President of the Association, at the Minneapolis meeting, I presented

one or two suggestions-they haven't yet been adopted because my influence in this body was very slight-and I have advocated them ever since. I sent them to the membership at large in advance of the meeting in Portland in 1907, and when at that meeting it came to the item of new business, President Alton B. Parker, of New York, warned us that there were only 12 minutes allotted to new business. I read my resolutions in the 12 minutes, because I had them boiled down, and I read them fast, and nobody else had anything to say.

Now, the point is this: We want to plan for something more than annual meetings and banquets and toasts.

My idea is that we ought to open a permanent office of this Association somewhere in the central part of this country, with a salaried secretary and an assistant secretary, who will give constant attention to the work of the Association. We want a permanent clearing house, as it were, a place that any member of the Association anywhere in the country who wants to connect up for information with the American Bar Association will know where to apply; where committees can be presumed to meet; and where information may be properly supplied; and in order to do that we may need to have an increase in our dues. I think we ought to double them. I don't know just what they are now, I think $10, but I think they ought to be made $20.

Ashley Cockrill, of Arkansas.

The way that we ought to look at the American Bar Association is the way that the new member looks at it, the man who has just come in. My appearance will probably surprise some of you when I state that I have been a member of the American Bar Association for 19 years. I can give the members here some idea as to how the new member looks at the American Bar Association and what he thinks about it. The trouble with the American Bar Association is that the new member, and the man who does not belong to it, looks upon it as an organization run by a coterie of distinguished lawyers, and that he has little to say about the election of officers, and little to do with its affairs, and no part on the program. If you want to make the American Bar Association effective throughout the length and breadth of the land, the thing that you have got to do is to make it more democratic.

The ordinary private in the ranks of the American Bar Association has very little to do with its management.

If we want to advance the interest and the influence of the Association we must make it more attractive to the new member. I think the first thing that ought to be done is to give the general membership more influence in the selection of the officers of the Association. Under the system that we have at present there might be only one man in some state who attends a meeting. That man nominates a member of the General Council from his state, and he is elected. He may nominate the vicepresident from his state, and he is elected. He nominates the members of the Local Council from his state and they are elected. Now, the nominations thus made may be entirely appropriate, but they may not be representative of the wish and will of the Bar of that particular state. I think if we want to increase the influence of the American Bar Association, one of the first things that we ought to do is to adopt the amendment to the Constitution and By-Laws as proposed here by Judge McClellan.

I would be the last man to detract from the interest that the big lawyers in this country have created or from the great work that they have performed on the programs of our various meetings, but if you want the American Bar Association to be a power and a great influence in this country you must interest the men at home in the Association. If you give the men in Arkansas and the men in Vermont the opportunity to have an election, that will do more to keep up their interest in this Association than anything else. I can see no harm in the proposal made by Judge McClellan, and I think it should be adopted. We have over 11,000 members in the Association now, and there are only 600 members here. Many of them cannot afford to come -many of those in the South particularly-they cannot afford to make these trips, to Saratoga Springs and to Montreal, and to the Pacific Coast and elsewhere. Many of them have court engagements that prevent their coming. The Association should. give to those men some voice in the participation in these proceedings.

James D. Andrews, of New York:

I have been a member of this Association for a great many years, and I have studied its proceedings closely, and I should

like to see the other side of these matters emphasized a little more not the pessimistic side, but the side which accounts for the fact that the American Bar Association is today a great influence in the United States of America. "By their works ye shall know them." A little Association that met in 1878, big in its membership not through numbers, but because of the character of the distinguished men who composed it, has grown until today it has more members equally distinguished and a vastly larger membership all of whom are energetic and capable men. I doubt very much whether anything can be done to change the aspect of a great organization of this kind into anything like a pure democratic assembly. I think it must be conducted through committees; it must be conducted through the agencies that we have. The Association has not only done good work, but is doing better work all the time.

I would suggest that in considering the question of how to improve the organization we can go back to first principles, and get right down to what is before us. I think after all the real object is to advance the science of jurisprudence; that is, to make jurisprudence a factor in the development and administration of the law. That is the paramount object. I think today we have a more scientific legal education than we have ever had, at least since the Civil War. I think the work that is being done in the American Bar Association is being done carefully and conscientiously. As to the idea that a new member coming into the Association is not welcomed, I say that is an erroneous conception. I have seen young men come in here, men that are now in the General Council, and when they came in the first year they were heard and heard respectfully whenever they took the floor. As to its being a deliberative body, I have never seen the time when a word fitly spoken in the way of admonition and warning against precipitation in a proceeding has not postponed the consideration until the next meeting. Therefore, the question which we have here is: Will the proposal made by Judge McClellan work out practically in the greater interest in the local Bar and in greater activity in the membership of the Association? I doubt it. You cannot get a large body of men and get them all together. There are a multitude of reasons men cannot attend the meetings of the American Bar Association every year and all the time,

and many of them cannot attend at any time. I think it is a mistake for the members of the Bar, and especially the younger members of the Bar, not to attend these meetings. They ought to attend them. So far as communicating with the Association is concerned, if I or any of us want to communicate with the Association it is the simplest thing in the world to do it. Who does not know where the office of the Secretary is? Who does not know where the office of the Treasurer is? There might come a time perhaps when the organization may reach the stage where it will seek a central home, and then you would naturally have your meeting place at that spot. But that would detract from the general interest. The American Bar Association is to be judged by the service which it performs to the law and to the people of the United States.

Nathan William MacChesney, of Illinois:

It seems to me that we might agree upon two things. First, that the American Bar Association does not receive the consideration from the public at large and has not the influence to which the valuable work which it does entitles it. Second, that we do not attract to the meetings of the Association, or to the Association itself, as large a percentage of the lawyers of this country as we should.

I think there has been a very distinct advance in the management of the Association during the time I have known it. I have been a critic at times of the Association and its management. Indeed, I think a body like this lives more or less by honest criticism, but I think there has been an open-mindedness on the part of the Executive Committee. This very matter that is under discussion now, appearing in the JOURNAL by the order of the Executive Committee, I think might have, under the practice obtaining in the Association in years past, been suppressed by the Executive Committee without an opportunity to discuss it. On the whole the younger members of the Association are given a larger chance than they ordinarily think they are given. There is no doubt in the world that an impression is abroad, both without the Association and within the Association, that this is no place for a young lawyer. Comparatively few men come here in the early years of their practice, even though they can afford the time and the money to do so. It is undoubtedly true that the