The effect of the failure to enforce old laws.

The effect of executive influence.

The

crusades of special interests.

such a period the recurring session of a legislature comes in its due course, or an ambitious or sympathetic governor calls an extra session. Thus dozens of useless laws are placed upon the statute books, every one of which chokes the channels of justice. Another fruitful source of legislation is the neglect or failure to enforce existing laws. A lax public sentiment, plus an incompetent executive, renders of no effect a wholesome law until the breaches of it become so numerous and offensive that an aroused and indignant public sentiment demands relief. The result is often a demand for further legislation, because it is erroneously assumed that the wrong suffered by the public could not have happened had the laws been adequate for its protection. And a crop of new and unnecessary statutes is the outcome unnecessary because all that is needed is rigid enforcement of existing law.

In many cases the misdirected or ignorant zeal of an executive officer is responsible for many new and useless laws. Such an official generally with the elements in him of the agitator, and often of the demagogue has been carried into office, after an hysterical canvass, under the promise to prosecute certain kinds of accused persons. Once elected, he takes up his work in the same spirit that had characterized his electoral campaign. He indicts with great facility. He tilts against classes or individuals, only to find that juries do not convict, or that, if they do, courts will not sustain. Then comes a new harvest of laws in order to justify or supplement the zeal of men who may be honest, but who are wanting either in judgment or knowledge. In addition there is nothing which can more surely produce contempt of the law than the spasmodic activity to which some prosecutors are addicted. . . .

Another favorite form of legislation is that for the benefit or at the behoof of a party. The continual tampering with election laws and regulations; the creation of useless offices, political or judicial; crusades against or favors conferred upon corporations or interests; the re-organization of city governments; the legislation of one class of officials out of office, in order to put

another in; the institution of a state constabulary for the purpose of controlling the police of great cities for party or personal purposes; the tilting against opponents, a process common to many legislative bodies all these are productive of such infinite and far-reaching harm as to emphasize the doctrine that no partisan legislation, either proposed before the bodies themselves or pushed in their committees, or enacted into law, can be fair, just or enduring.

The forms of legislative waste here enumerated, and the causes Committees and logwhich promote them, serve to show why it is that an almost comrolling. plete change has come over the character of our legislative bodies. Their presence gives the speaker almost arbitrary power, makes committees into a new form of tyrants, develops management and intrigue into fine arts, produces bosses as a natural result, and, while keeping the larger men out of legislative halls, puts small ones into their places. Log-rolling becomes a necessity, and mischievous or useless bills pass easily and almost by sufferance. The existence of these elements also promotes conflict between urban and rural interests in the hope that one or the other may escape a fair share of that taxation which always grows as a result of such a dangerous rivalry.

It is not alone in the domain of law-making and the legislator that these abuses are potent. They add to the labor of the judiciary. Upon it is thrown for adjudication, year after year, a body of work absolutely unnecessary, and at great expense to the public and often to private individuals. The constitutionality of much of this new legislation is continually questioned. So true is it that a substantial percentage of the questions brought before Appellate Courts are related to doubts of the validity of the laws under which actions are brought. Indeed, in the State of New York, in a period covering about twenty years, the constitutionality of over five hundred statutes was challenged in the Court of Appeals. The dovetailing of new legislation into existing law, and the cost of construing the possible meaning of a legislature, also enter into a considerable part of the annual output of twenty

The burden

on the

judiciary.

Legislation in England and the United States compared.

thousand decisions rendered by Appellate Courts. Many of these mushroom enactments are permitted to slumber by common consent. But this is dangerous, because, in such cases, offensive laws remain upon the statute books, and may later be evoked for mischievous purposes.

...

With more than twenty-five thousand pages of new laws added to the statute books each year, it is apparent, if the suggestions so far made be well founded, that relief is absolutely necessary. During the years between 1899 and 1905, England's Parliament, legislating for the needs of forty-two millions of home population and millions of dependents, passed an average of only forty-six general and two hundred and forty-six special laws the number of the latter being swelled by the necessity for granting franchises for railways and charter amendments for cities. One of the potent elements in the working out of this to us most astonishing result has been the presence of a salaried draftsman lawyer of high repute, well paid for his services - whose duty it is, not only to study the phraseology of proposed laws, but also to make a thorough examination of existing legislation, for the benefit of Parliament and its committees. The publicity of all committee hearings and the report of their proceedings in the press have also contributed much to promote this result. While our complicated system of local government will account for a considerable part of our vast volume of legislation, the greater part of it is due to causes such as I have suggested.

188. Legislatures and Railways

a

The following letter from Mr. J. T. Brooks, of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, throws an interesting light on the relation of public officials to railway corporations:

Office of the Second Vice-President,

PITTSBURG, July 20, 1894.

Hon. Joseph H. Choate, President Constitutional Convention,

Albany, N.Y.:

The growth

very

in the

.. I have seen the evils of the pass system grow from small beginnings to what I regard as very great and deplorable demand for proportions. I have tried to persuade officials of other railway passes. companies to follow my example, and I have endeavored to persuade the Legislature of Ohio, in which State I have always lived, on different occasions, to pass prohibitory laws on this subject, but in each instance and always, without avail. There was a time when public officials were content to receive occasionally a trip pass for themselves. They have learned to ask for passes for themselves, for members of their families, and for political adherents and others. They not only ask for passes good over lines which are controlled by the officers to whom they apply, but they ask for passes over connecting lines to distant and remote parts of the country, good at all seasons of the year. They not only ask for trip passes for themselves and their friends, but they ask for annual passes for themselves and their friends; and no matter how many passes may be granted to a single individual, if a single request be refused, the enmity of that official is aroused, and his vengeance exercised if he has an opportunity so to do.

I have known a member of the Supreme Court of the United States to apply for free transportation the money value of which, in a single instance, was between two and three hundred dollars. Governors of States, United States Senators, Members of the House of Representatives, members of every department of State Government, from the Governor to the janitor ask and expect to receive these favors.

Denial of

favors

leads to

In consequence of the position I have taken, and persisted in on this subject for several years, I have seen county auditors and State boards of equalization who hold the power of taxation retaliation. over us, exercise it tyrannically and unjustly to the detriment of the companies I represent. I have known of the chiefs of the executive departments in the State government combining in the Capitol during sessions of the Legislature and at other times, to wreak their vengeance upon our company because they were not served with annual passes by our company, as by other

Favors for tax officials.

Giving passes is giving money.

companies. I have known of the passage of resolutions in state legislatures, made against the companies I represent, accompanied by suppressed howls of delight, for the reason that the members had not been served with passes according to their wishes and requests. I have received offers from men in public station to serve our company in their official capacity, if I would give them passes and I have received threats from the chiefs of executive departments of State because I declined to give them annual passes as other railroads have done. I have seen other railroad companies issue these passes without stint to all persons in all grades and stages of public life, and receive a direct pecuniary benefit therefrom, and have seen those benefits withheld from our company because I did not do as other men did in the granting of passes.

An officer of a rival railroad company recently told me that he had taken the entire Board of Tax Commissioners of a certain State, with their families and certain friends, from a large inland city to Fortress Monroe and Washington and back home, furnishing the comforts of a Pullman car, free transportation, and all expenses of the journey, and receiving, as he said, as a direct reward thereof, a reduction in the appraisement of the property he represented, equivalent to many thousands of dollars a year. . . .

A pass over a railroad is the equivalent of money and few men in civilized society are above the temptation of receiving it. In very many instances railroad companies receive a direct and pecuniary equivalent of the pass which they give. In other cases the public officials who receive passes quietly enjoy the saving of money, which the passes afford them, and discharge their duties impartially as between the railroad company and the public precisely as if the passes had not been given. I regard the tendency of the system pernicious in the extreme. The difference between giving the thing of money value and the money itself, to a public official, is slight. If railroad officials and public officials become accustomed to the giving and receiving of things of value, the official character of the recipient being the only