It is altogether right and proper that children under the age of fourteen years should not be employed at certain tasks, such as work in factories, etc., but boys of this age should be permitted to perform certain kinds of light work, especially during the school vacations, and to run errands after school under certain circumstances, and thus cultivate habits of industry, and arouse laudable ambitions.

Many saloon-keepers and dealers in cigarettes and tobacco have been arrested and fined for selling to children. It is my opinion that not enough emphasis is given to the need of a strict enforcement of the law against the sale of liquor and cigarettes to minors. I have tried more than 25,000 criminal and quasi-criminal cases, and while it would be altogether untrue to say that all cigarette users are criminals, yet it is true that almost every criminal, degenerate, defective and delinquent man or woman brought before the court, was a user of cigarettes, and nearly every truant was found to be addicted to the habit. In the vast majority of these cases the most unfailing accompaniments of the degenerate, professional criminal, defective and feeble-minded individual are the yellow-stained fingers, the discolored lips, the dimmed and water-soaked eyes, dullness of hearing, and the absence of almost all moral perception.

The court of domestic relations is now a firmly established institution. Its moral force in the community is most salutary. Thousands of men upon whom the responsibilities of married life rest lightly are kept in a fairly straight and narrow path by a knowledge of the fact that there is an institution well equipped to mete out summary punishment to wife and child deserters. No one unfamiliar with the court can appreciate the range of its activities. Family skeletons are always on parade; usually from twenty to fifty stalk in and out of the court every day; some of them are most hideous; others are mirth-provoking and welcome, for they relieve the tension. But few lawyers appear in the court. In not over one out of five cases does a lawyer appear on either side. Nearly all of the questions are put by the judge and are aimed to reach the heart of the trouble by the most direct route. The one all-embracing question is at once addressed to the deserting husband, who is now thoroughly sobered by his arrest. That question is, "Why did you leave home?" If all the answers to it during one month could be compiled, they would make interesting reading. The volume could be used to point many moral lessons, but it could also be used as a valuable

joke book. Here are a few of the answers: Daley left home, as he said, because his wife refused to wear mourning to her mother-inlaw's funeral. When I turned to the wife and asked why she did not wear the accustomed black, she promptly replied: "I am no hypocrite; I was not sorry the old thing died and I was not going to make anybody think I was." Another said he left home because his wife persisted in wearing her kimono to the breakfast table. When I asked her why such conduct, she replied that she was brought up that way and she never would change. Another said he left home because the bill for his mother-in-law's false teeth came with his monthly grocery bill. Another, a pretty young Swedish girl, married to an artist, said she left home because her mother-in-law went everywhere with them on their honeymoon.

In many cases the court was called upon to determine how much a wife, whose husband earns from $15 to $20 per week, should pay for her spring or fall hat. In many other cases the question for the court's solemn adjudication was how many afternoons during a week may a wife go to the movies and properly take care of her home. In others the all-important question was how much the wife should allow her husband during the week for carfare, beer and cigars. 1 found the usual allowance by a thrifty housewife was 5 cents per day. A frequent complaint by one side or the other was the infrequent intervals between baths, and the court had judicially to determine what was a proper interval.

A day seldom passed in this court when from one to five women were not carried from the room in an unconscious or semi-conscious condition due very often to epilepsy or to some other form of incurable disease.

Last year we established two extra rooms in connection with the court, one where the children might wait with their mothers until the cases in which they were interested were called for hearing. In this large room were kept tables upon which was furnished the latest reading matter, and many rocking chairs and blocks from which the children could erect houses, etc. In the other room several children's cots were placed and no day passed without some unfortunate babes sleeping upon these cots entirely unconscious of the work going on, for their care, in the court outside. It often happens that from five to ten or fifteen babies are brought to the court in a single day. Many of these babies are not over one week old. For

the care of these children and their mothers the court has now employed a nurse, who devotes her whole time to this service. Milk is also supplied for the use of the waiting children.

While the court is doing much in an advisory way in helping to reestablish broken homes, yet too much emphasis must not be placed upon this kind of work, for the presiding judge is called upon every day to enforce the law with rigor. It is the fear of the penalties which the law prescribes which enables the court to obtain any kind of justice for the injured. Take away from the court of domestic relations this power to punish without ceremony or delay the evil-doer, and the court would lose all its efficiency. No day passes but what it becomes necessary, in order to break down the stubborn will of a wife deserter, that he be sent to the workhouse. Usually within an hour or often within ten minutes from the time he is arraigned in court he finds himself upon the way to the Bridewell. After he has been there a day, possibly two or three days, a great change comes over him and he sends a most urgent appeal to the court to release him on parole. Accompanying such an appeal is a promise henceforth to provide properly for his family. It follows, therefore, that while the court daily sends many wife deserters to prison, it brings back from the prison in the course of a week a number substantially equal to the number sent, and a new opportunity is offered. One such committal is usually sufficient to accomplish the court's purpose. It is sometimes necessary, however, that the same person be committed two, three and four times before his lesson is thoroughly learned.

In advocating law reforms, in order to secure social justice, it is all-important to keep in mind the urgent need of keeping the law strong and virile, and in making the penalties for its violation real and substantial.

THE PRIVILEGE OF THE ACCUSED TO REFUSE TO

TESTIFY

BY HERBERT R. LIMBURG,

Of the New York Bar.

The extent and character of public criticism of our courts may well be regarded a thermometer registering the degree of success with which our law is administered. The writer proposes to consider at the outset, how the privilege of the accused to refuse to testify affects the administration of the law, and to what extent it may be responsible for criticism of the courts.

The importance of dispensing justice is no greater than the importance of satisfying the community that justice is dispensed. There is no such thing as absolute justice. Our standards are always more or less artificial. They are merely the expression of our ever changing view of public morals and of public and private right. In a sense law is justice, and as we change our law we change our justice; indeed our statutes as well as our judge-made law represent merely the standard of morality adopted for the time being. That is why the public opinion of the administration of the law is so important, and why it may be of interest to analyze briefly some phases of the common criticism of our courts. This may enable us to discern specific weaknesses and the remedy therefor.

The object of every trial, whether civil or criminal, is to ascertain the truth. In the final analysis every case presents a simple question, to which the courts are called upon to give a categorical answer. This question is: Are the facts stated in the "complaint" in a civil case, or in the "indictment" in the criminal case true? That is the sole question that a jury is called upon to answer, and from the answer flow the legal consequences prescribed by our then system of law and morals. Our rules of procedure in themselves amount to nothing more than the method adopted for the sake of convenience and regularity, by which the jury's answer to this question may be secured. If they assist toward a correct ascertainment of the facts, they may generally be regarded as good rules; if they tend toward suppressing the truth or toward rendering a correct determination of

the issue more uncertain, they are inherently unsound. The great cry against the "law's delays" is but one phase of this question. "Justice delayed is justice defeated" is a trite, but in the main truthful statement; not primarily true because delay may inconvenience the individual or the state, nor because delay in itself may frequently occasion hardship, but chiefly because it renders a truthful verdict more uncertain. In fact the most severe criticism to which our courts are ordinarily subjected is that they do not dispense justice, i.e., that our system is not conducive towards reaching a truthful verdict.

In criminal cases the criticism is most frequently made that the guilty escape conviction. The converse-that the innocent are convicted-has doubtless been true in some cases, but these are sporadic and the result in nearly every instance of intense temporary local feeling. However deplorable, these cases are exceptional and cannot be regarded as an indictment of our law or of our system of procedure.

No system has yet been found which will always bring about a correct determination of the facts. The jury system seems to come closer to the ideal than any other, yet it is impossible wholly to remove passion, prejudice or improper considerations from all juries, just as it is impossible to select only perfect judges.

The chief complaint against our system in criminal cases, however, seems to be that there is a large percentage of miscarriages of justice, in cases where the accused is acquitted. Most juries endeavor to reach a conscientious and truthful result. If then, there is any considerable percentage of failures to reach that result, we are confronted with the question whether all of the available evidence has been presented to the jury, and, if not, whether artificial laws or rules of procedure prevent the jury from considering relevant testimony which would assist in reaching a truthful determination of the issues. It is from this point of view that a consideration of our constitutional provision that no man shall be compelled to incriminate himself may well be approached.

The elimination of the accused as a compulsory witness necessarily involves that the prosecution is prevented from presenting evidence which would throw light upon the question at issue. This is so whether the accused be guilty or innocent, for his evidence would tend to show either his innocence or his guilt, and thus assist in its