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made a motion; with that motion seconded, I desire the President to put the motion.

A VOICE:

The motion is seconded.

PRESIDENT HOLDOM:

seat; he is out of order.

Mr. Sherman will please take his

MR. E. B. SHERMAN: Mr. Sherman is in order and has made a motion, and insists that the Chair shall put the motion.

PRESIDENT HOLDOM: The Chair rules that Mr. Sherman

is out of order, and refuses to entertain his motion

MR. E. B. SHERMAN: That is sufficient. I desire the records of the proceedings to show that.

PRESIDENT HOLDOM: Let the records so show. Will the gentleman-Mr. Tenney-please report for his committee? Report presented as follows:

CHICAGO, ILL., July 12, 1901. We, the undersigned Committee, to whom was referred the report of the Treasurer, have examined the vouchers and audited the report, and find the same correct, and recommend that the report be approved, and the thanks of the Association be extended to the Treasurer for the efficient and faithful performance of his duties.

Respectfully submitted,

HORACE KENT TENNEY,
WALLACE HECKMAN.

PRESIDENT HOLDOM: I will say to you, gentlemen, that I purposely deferred calling upon our distinguished guest, Mr. Carson, to open the day's proceedings, because I was anxious that as many of the members as possible should get here to hear him, and I was informed by gentlemen that some members expected to be here, but were unavoidably delayed a short time, among others, some judges of the Ap pellate Court who had to hear a few motions this morning and who will reach here soon after ten; that is the reason I delayed calling upon Mr. Carson according to the program, all of which was explained to Mr. Carson and I have proceeded thus with his acquiescence. These other matters that were called up in the interval came over from yesterday.

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I hardly wished to be put on record in the way that Judge Sherman seemingly desired I should be, and that is the reason I did not entertain his motion.

I now have the pleasure of introducing to you our honored guest, Mr. Hampton L. Carson, whose address is "An Illustration of the Evolution of National Authority." Carson, will you please step forward?

(Applause).

(The address will be found in Part II.)

MR. STEVENS:

Mr.

Before the members leave I move a vote of thanks of this Association to our distinguished fellow member of the bar, and that his interesting, instructive and entertaining address be printed in the proceedings of this Association.

MR. MOSES: I second the motion.

The motion was adopted.

PRESIDENT HOLDOM: The next in order upon the program is the report of the Nominating Committee, and election of officers for the ensuing year. Mr. Page, I think, is chairman of that committee. Is he ready to report?

MR. PAGE:

Mr. President and Members of the Association:

Your Committee on Nominations begs leave to report as follows for the cfficers for the ensuing year:

For President......

For First Vice President..
For Second Vice President.
For Third Vice President.
For Secretary and Treasurer.

July 12, 1901.

..John S. Stevens, of Peoria.
Murray F. Tuley, of Chicago.
Henry A. Neal, of Charleston.
..Guy P. Williams, of Galesburg.
James H. Matheny, of Springfield.
Respectfully submitted,

S. S. GREGORY,
CHARLES L. CAPEN,
JAMES B. BRADWELL,
BENSON WOOD,

GEO. T. PAGE.

MR. PAGE: I move the adoption of the report.
MR. DENT: I second the motion.

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PRESIDENT HOLDOM: Those in favor of the motion signify it by saying aye; contrary, no. The report is unanimously adopted and the gentlemen named are elected officers of this Association for the ensuing year.

The next on the program is "The Practice Commission,— informal reports by members of the Commission." Judge Gross, you were a member of that Commission; the Association is always pleased to hear from you. You are now in order.

JUDGE GROSS: I am delighted, Mr. President, and gentlemen, to know that I am in order. It is sometimes embarrassing to be out of order. What I shall say will detain you but a few moments. In the admirable address of our President, the work of the Practice Commission, the practical side of it, has been well presented. If anything further was needed by way of a report from your present speaker, who was the representative of this Association upon the Practice Commission, placed there by your partiality and insistence-if anything further in respect to the work of the Practice Commission is now required, I would like to refer you to the Proceedings of the Illinois State Bar Association at its meeting, in this city in July, 1899, when, before that Commission was created, I made my report. You will find it on pages 16 to 32, Part II; and lest a copy of the Proceedings for that year may not be before you, I will venture to make a quotation. After referring to the Commissioners to be appointed and what they were expected to do, and to the fact that they would be required to serve without pay, I then said:

"But you must close your offices, abandon your own business, travel hither and yon across the State, hold your meetings where, when and as you can get together for public hearing and conference and work, advance your own money for expenses, do your patient. painstaking, technical work, and at the end of eighteen months and when you have filed your final report, you will each be permitted to draw from the public treasury $300 FOR EXPENSES, and to return to your abandoned private business with empty pockets, and without even the poor consolation of a 'well done, good and faithful servant.'

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Your wife will doubtless meet you with open arms; your children run to greet you with innocent ardor; and the family meeting will be a joyous one; but it will be the joy of the father, when, afar off he saw his prodigal son dejected, humiliated, hungry and in rags, returning from his foolish wanderings. But with this difference-there will be no feasting, nor killing of the fatted calf; the larder will be empty and there will be no fatted calf to kill.

"And when all this time has been spent and this intelligent labor bestowed, (assuming that a competent commission can be formed that will do it), what assurance is there that the result will be accepted by the Legislature? None whatever! On the contrary, it may safely be asserted, based on the experiences of the past, that the commissioners' report, however excellent in character it may be, WILL NOT RECEIVE AT THE HANDS OF AN ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE, ANY CONSIDERATION WHATEVER. Its doom is already sealed, and its death predestined before birth. The XLIId General Assembly will be a political-not a considerate law-making body; and the exhausted poverty-stricken commissioners bearing in their wasted arms, their bantling, will dance attendance in vain at closed committee rooms, and wear themselves out in weary waiting for an opportunity that will never come to present, explain and advocate the adoption of their amendments, revisions, additions and corrections.' Their work will cost the State nothing; it will, therefore, be worth nothing. The putative fathers of the report are forbidden to belong to the virile, forceful, office-holding class-even a notary public is incompetent; they will be without power, influence, vote or patronage, and will deserve the contempt in which they and their work will inevitably be held."

As you will observe, I told you then what would be the result, in my judgment, of the work of a Practice Commission, set on foot as this one was. And now I have only to say, that time and events have confirmed to the fullest extent the very pessimistic view taken by me on that occasion.

The Commission-every member present, held various public sessions in this and other cities of the State, and were in such session about forty days. It received and considered over five hundred independent propositions of amendment to the law supposedly relating to practice and procedure, some of which, however, fell outside those lines. Of these suggestions the Commission adopted some less than two hundred, and these were formulated and put into the shape of nearly

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one hundred independent bills for presentation to the legislature. Most of these bills were comparatively short-the longest being a revision of Chapter 110, known as the general Practice Act, embracing 132 sections.

The report of the Commission was printed and widely distributed, and presented to the legislature on the fifth day of the session; and this was followed by the formal amendment bills. We were able to bring about the formation of a subcommittee to whom all our work should be referred, made up of members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Judicial Department Committee; but because the Speaker withheld announcement of his Judicial Committee until the eleventh week of the session, our work was not taken up by the sub-committee until the latter part of March. The members of the Commission appeared before the sub-committee (less than a majority attending), and presented and explained their work in detail. They then withdrew and retired, and there the matter stopped and ended. No report was made by the sub-committee, and no one of the bills originating with the Commission, and the result of most conscientious and devoted attention and critical consideration, ever came before either branch of the legislature for consideration. And so the work of the Commission died from legislative starvation and neglect.

It is due to the lawyer members of the legislature to say, that they were in sympathy with the work of the Commission, and, in the main, approved it; and had the legislative conditions been such as to favor constructive and remedial legisla tion, doubtless the result would have been different. Whether anything in the future will come of our work, time alone can tell.

For the Bar of the State this should be said. From the first and all along the eighteen months of our service, it has unstintedly manifested and expressed its hearty sympathy and approval of the effort being made to remedy the glaring omis