GEORGE T. PAGE. same kind of funds for investment. Oftentimes the beneficiary of the trust and the ward of the guardian are under the same disabilities. The duty of each is to use diligence and intelligent care in administering the trust estate. It is difficult to understand why one should have any greater latitude in making investments than the other. And yet while the guardian at all times must invest only in securities approved by the Court having supervision of such matters, the trustee is empowered to invest in a much larger and more doubtful list of securities, without the supervision of any court. I think the probabilities are that the Trust Estates are much more likely to lose by incautious investments under the license of the trustees act than they are to profit by its wider opportunities. It would be interesting to know just what influences placed the statute on the books, whether those influences came from wouldbe investors of trust funds or from would-be sellers of the securities favored by the act. BULK SALES ACT. An act, new in this State, but in use for some years in several other States, prohibiting sales of merchandise, otherwise than in the regular course of the seller's business, without the seller first complying with the conditions of the act, was passed in 1905. This act is commonly known as the Bulk Sales Act. Similar acts in several other States have been held unconstitutional, but our act is probably not subject to most of the criticisms successfully urged against other acts. However, there is one particular in which I think our act is open to grave criticism. It can only apply to a particular class of business men, who must always be of the debtor class, and places them at a distinct and probably an unlawful disadvantage, in the disposition of their business, when compelled by necessity or moved for any reason to do so. It is quite likely that in the long run it will injure most of those whom it was intended to benefit, for no man can advantageously dispose of PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. his business, especially if he is in embarrassed circumstances, if he is first compelled to advertise his necessities. THE MUNICIPAL COURT ACT. In February of this year the act establishing a municipal court in the city of Chicago was before the Supreme Court, on the question of the validity of the constitutional amendment under which the court was established. In the opinion handed down, the Court held the constitutional amendment valid, and the act in the main valid, saying that it was possible that parts of it might be found unconstitutional when brought into question in actual practice. While the Municipal Court Act is limited to the city of Chicago, yet I think it is an act of more than ordinary interest throughout the State. If satisfactory in operation it will show a way to relief from those evils so prevalent in practices of Justices of the Peace and constables; and if its many new provisions stand the test of actual use, we may find in them the solution of questions of practice that have vexed the bench and bar for many years. We are fortunate in having on our program a paper dealing especially with this act. HIGHWAY COMMISSIONERS. In an act establishing a State Highway Commission, and another act, providing for a limited use of convict labor in the manufacture of road building material and machinery to be used under the supervision of the State Highway Commission, the legislature has entered upon a line of legislation that, pursued to a legitimate conclusion, will be of great benefit to every citizen of the State of Illinois, and perhaps will solve two problems that have been disturbing elements in the minds of the people for half a century, viz: what unobjectionable use can be made of convict labor, and what remedy is there for the proverbially bad roads of Illinois. Good highways are a good GEORGE T. PAGE. asset in any community. They contribute alike to the pleasure and progress of any community. If the State Highway Commission shall succeed in formulating plans and in stimulating the interest of the local authorities so that, through the working out of those plans, a system of good roads can be established. and maintained, the good results will be incalculable. If convict labor can be used directly upon the highways or in doing some work, the product of which shall go to the betterment of the highways of the State, there will be found an unfailing quantity of unobjectionable employment for the inmates of our penal institutions. PENITENTIARIES. But there is recent and most important legislation touching the disposition of convict labor and dealing generally with the treatment of convicts. In 1903 the legislature placed on the statute books quite an elaborate act to regulate the employment of inmates of penal and reformatory institutions of the State. The act created a Board of Prison Industries for all penal and reformatory institutions. The act has been considerably amended by the laws of 1905. These acts are of first importance as giving public legislative recognition to the fact that every convict is not an incorrigible, and that there are degrees of criminality. That penal institutions may and should be places for rehabilitation and reformation, so that men may return from them to the world better and not worse than when they left it. Let us hope that the results of operations under this statute will be so beneficial that they shall create a demand for further sane and intelligent legislation along the same lines, for there is a crying need of reform in our criminal laws. There is one thing in particular that to my mind is ridiculously absurd. It is this: A man without property but with a wife and children commits a crime and is discovered. The law PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. directs that he shall be arrested and thrust into the county jail, where he must remain unemployed, may be, one, three or six months, or possibly a year, before trial; and then, if convicted, to be returned to the same idle jail, or may be taken to the penitentiary, where the sentence is to "hard labor" with no reference to reformation or rehabilitation. This is what the law provides for the guilty one, but what provision does it make for those innocent ones-the wife and children? None whatever. With the known certainty that they cannot cope with the world and become good citizens in it, the law absolutely ignores them until they become paupers, vagabonds and criminals de facto, then it takes notice and makes them paupers and criminals de jure. This is not an overdrawn case, but is an every-day occurrence, and in the face of it, with full knowledge of it, we wonder at the increase of crime. Illinois has over one hundred counties and county jails, housing within their slimy walls thousands of prisoners, some convicted, some to be convicted, and many never to be convicted of any crime. Some incorrigible but many more corrigible and tractable, all kept for weeks and many months in idleness, with no plan or scheme for improvement or reform. There will come a time when we shall look back upon this condition of things as one of the wonders of Twentieth Century Christian civilization. PRIMARY LAW. The most notable of the recent holdings of the Supreme Court declaring acts of the legislature unconstitutional, is, I presume, that touching the Primary Law of 1905. When the Supreme Court got through writing its opinion of that act, there did not enough remain to entitle it to remembrance in the annals of our necrologist. Though the act itself has passed into history, study of it, illuminated by Judge Cartwright's opinion, will prove very interesting and not unprofitable. GEORGE T. PAGE. A special session of the legislature just two days before the first act would have been a year old (had it lived) passed another Primary Law, which before it left the Senate Chamber was characterized by the Chairman of the Senate as a "Double Headed Disaster," "A conspicuous and humiliating failure." What will be its fate before the people, or before the Supreme Court, if it gets there, I do not here care to predict, because this act and the general subject of Primary Elections are to be specially considered in our program to follow. PROBATE COURT. An act extending the jurisdiction of probate courts and conferring original jurisdiction over testamentary trusts, was held void by the Supreme Court because not signed by the President of the Senate, the Court holding that Section 13, Article 4, of the Constitution of our State, requiring that "every bill having passed both houses shall be signed by the speakers thereof," is mandatory. MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP. The legislature of 1903 passed an act providing for the purchase and operation by cities of street railways. This act is commonly known as the Municipal Ownership Act, and both sides of the question growing out of that legislation are to be discussed before this meeting. The municipal ownershp of street railways is only a part of a wider scheme strongly advocated and now being much discussed by many, which has for its object government ownership of all public utilities. I take it that the scheme for government ownership of public utilities is only one outcropping of that great social unrest which is the product of distrust and dissatisfaction with the social, business and political conditions throughout the country. In the years past, it has been charged that legislative action not only in the States but in Congress was too much influenced and controlled by the moneyed interests of the country. The legislation of the |