volving four dollars, for all anxiety he shows. In a quiet fashion the questions begin. Sometimes he stands at the witness's side; oftener he leans over a near-by juryman's chair. He consults notes but rarely. Yet it is always evident that he has carefully blocked out his plan, despite all the informality. When he leads up to the crucial question and the witness balks, he may drop that line temporarily. But sooner or later the question must be answered, or there comes virtual self-condemnation through declining to answer, on the plea that the witness will incriminate himself. Never did our jury see one or the other result fail of accomplishment on anything essential. Mr. Folk has no set plan and conducts no two examinations in the same way. But in this respect he never varies; under no circumstances was he ever seen to lose his temper, raise his voice, or in any way show excitement. And we saw many occasions when the majority of men certainly would have lost control of themselves. It is the same way when he is trying his cases. The one thing which most impresses the witness is Mr. Folk's quiet strength. When the witness gave way to nerves and fear and anger, and there was an explosion Mr. Folk would calmly stroll around the room, relight his cigar, and then go up to the witness and say something like this: "Now, I'm not going to argue with you. You go on record, either way." "LIABILITY for 'The General Slocum' Holocaust" is discussed in Case and Comment for August: Preliminary to the question of the limited liability law is the question of liability to an action for the death of a person. No such right of action exists by general maritime law, nor is it given by any act of Congress, unless it may be one of these mentioned below. It must, therefore, exist, if at all, by reason of State legislation. . . . But under the laws of New York there is such a right of action when death is caused by wrongful act, and this right, given by a State law, may be enforced either in the State courts, or in a court of admiralty. It is therefore clear that, as this disaster occurred in the State of New York, the law of that State, creating a right of action for death, may be enforced, unless, or except so far as, it is defeated or modified by the limited liability law of Congress. A limitation of liability to the value of the owner's interest is provided by U. S. Rev. Stat., Sec. 4283 (U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 2943), where the loss occurs without his "privity or knowledge," and this applies to all liabilities of the owner, even such as are created by State laws. Butler 7. Boston & S. S. S. Co., 130 U. S. 527 32 L. ed. 1017, 9 Sup. Ct. Rep. 612; Craig . Continental Ins. Co., 141 U S. 638, 35 L. ed. 886, 12 Sup. Ct. Rep. 97. The cases just cited also decide that this limitation of liability extends to liabilities for personal injury and death, as well as to all other kinds of loss or injury. The meaning of the words "privity of knowledge" is held in the case of Lord v. Goodall, N. & P. S. S. Co. 4 Sawy. 292, Fed. Cas. No. 8,506, to be a personal participation of the owner in some fault or act of negligence causing or contributing to the loss, or some personal knowledge or means of knowledge of which he is bound to avail himself, of a contemplated loss, or of a condition of things likely to produce or contribute to the loss, without adopting means to prevent it. There must be some personal participation or concurrence of the owner himself in some fault or negligence to constitute such privity as will exclude him from the benefit of the statute; but he is bound to exercise the utmost care to provide the vessel with a competent master and crew, and to see that the ship when she sails is in all respects seaworthy, and if, by reason of any fault or neglect in these particulars, a loss occurs, it is with his privity within the meaning of the act But it is held in Quinlan v. Pew, 5 C. C. A. 438, 5 U. S. App. 382, 56 Fed. 111, that, if he employs a suitable agent to look after the in spection and equipment of the boat, he may be relieved under the statute, though the agent may in some particulars be negligent. In the case of The Annie Faxon, 21 C. C. A. 366, 44 U. S. App. 591, 75 Fed. 312, it was held that privity or knowledge of a defect in a steamboat boiler could not be imputed to the owner if the defect was not apparent, and was not of such a character as to be detected by the inspection of an unskilled person, and he had in good faith employed a competent person to make the inspection. The same case held that, if the government inspectors called to make an examination of the vessel failed to perform their duty, knowledge of their defective inspection could not be imputed to the owner if he had delegated the matter of the inspection to a competent employé. But where the shipowner himself undertook to examine the vessel, and failed to use proper care in doing so, it was held, in The Republic, 9 C. C. A. 386, 20 U. S. App. 561, 61 Fed. 109, that he could not claim that a loss occurring from a defective condition. which he failed to discover occurred without his privity or knowledge. Where the owner of the vessel is a corporation it is held, in Craig . Continental Ins. Co., 141 U. S. 638, 35 L. ed. 886, 12 Sup. Ct. Rep. 97, that the privity or knowledge referred to in the statute must be that of the managing officers of the corporation. The above cases give the substance of the law known as the limited liability law with respect to the shipowner's liability for the loss of passengers. This law, as above shown, applies to the loss of life as well as to other losses or injuries. But there is another act of Congress which needs to be considered on this subject. It is the steamboat inspection act of February 28, 1871. Section 43 of that act provides that for damage to a passenger through any failure to comply with the requirements of that statute, or because of known defects or imperfections in steering apparatus or hull, the owner and master, as well as the vessel, "shall be liable to each and every person so injured" to the full amount of the damage. This language, strictly construed, would not seem to give a right of action for death of a passenger to his personal representatives, but it seems to be assumed without question in The Annie Faxon, 21 C. C. A. 366, 44 U. S. App. 591, 75 Fed. 312, that this provision does govern cases of death as well as those of personal injuries. That case does clearly hold, however, that the owner's failure to comply with the inspection law may defeat his right to the limitation of liability. The Supreme Court of the United States, in Butler v. Boston & S. S. S. Co. 130 U. S. 527, 32 L. ed. 1017, 9 Sup. Ct. Rep. 612, left room for a doubt whether a failure to comply strictly with every requirement of this statute would necessarily defeat the owner's claim to a limitation of liability. In that case it held that under Sec. 43 of this act he could not have the benefit of limited liability if the injury or loss occurred through his fault. This seems to suggest 'the possibility that there might be in some instances a lack of strict compliance with the statute which would not be deemed his fault. The act of Congress of June 26, 1884, Sec. 18, which provides for the apportionment of the debts and liabilities to the individual owners, has been considered in connection with the inspection law, but was held in The Annie Faxon, 21 C. C. A. 366, 44 U. S. App. 591, 75 Fed. 312, to leave that act unrepealed. "THE Legal Position of Trade Unions," in England, is thus summed up by A. Ure in The Juridical Review (London): The results of the foregoing survey of the present state of the law relating to trade unions may be summarized in a few sentences. A trade union can with impunity communicate a fact to a workman, and wait about his doors to do it, but may not exercise upon him the art of peaceful persuasion however bland its accents may be, and however transitory the workmen's position may be. A gangway from ship to shore is as much struck at as a quiet lane at the back of the workman's house. A trade union may tell a master that in a certain event his men will quit their work, even although that certain event is his, the master's, doing something he has a perfect right to do. The existence of an evil motive or of no motive at all, does not signify. A trade union may not try to make men break their contracts; nor may it counsel and persuade men to refrain from taking employment, unless it can justify its intervention to the satisfaction of the king's judges. A trade union may not, when no strike is pending, call out an employer's men and persuade his customers not to deal with him, if the object be to injure the employer's business so as to coerce his will. A trade union may not order stop-days, or any other act on the part of workmen which has the effect of causing the men to break their contracts, even although the men have themselves resolved upon this policy, and only ask the direction of the union in carrying it out. A trade union will be responsible in damages to the full extent of its resources for anv loss incurred in consequence of any of its officials having, while acting in pursuance of its orders, overstepped legal bounds. These propositions, I think, contain a fair abridg ment of the law as we see it today, viewed in the light of the decisions of the Courts. SPEAKING of one phase of the recent Chicago strike, The Law Register says: It is said to be a practice of motor-men and conductors running in the vicinity of the "stockyards" to aid the striking butchers by refusing to stop street cars at the proper corners to let on or off workmen employed at the plants. The object is to force the men. to run the gauntlet of the pickets and "sluggers" who line the streets in the vicinity and waylay the men lawfully going to and returning from work. Many assaults have taken place under these circumstances, and out of them actions for damages may arise. Any lawyer engaged in prosecuting such a case would render a public service by joining the car company in such action and make it liable for these unlawful practices of its employés. It would teach public-service companies of this kind a much-needed lesson, that they are not to aid and abet the lawless in times of labor troubles. Such a practice would be quickly stopped, if the company should be compelled to pay the resulting damages. IN an article on "The Civil Code of Louisiana as a Democratic Institution," in The American Lawyer for August, Charles E. Fenner, late Justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana, gives this outline of the Napoleon and Louisiana Codes: Let us pass in hasty review a few of the fundamental principles on which it rests: Absolute equality of all persons before the law, with the sweeping away of all personal and class privileges, proclaimed and put into effect for the first time in the history of the world. Separation of the powers of government into Legislative, Executive and Judicial, independent of each other, and recognition of the making of laws as the exclusive function of the Legislative department. Separation of church and State in all matters of legal right and obligation, and especially by the establishment of marriage as a purely civil contract, regulated and protected by law, and freed from all canonical interference or control. Establishment of an order of succession based on the law of nature, with abolition of all rights of primogeniture and recognition of complete equality amongst heirs of equal degree. Recognition of the parental power, but restricted within reasonable limits consistent with the rights and liberty of children. Maintenance of the marital authority as an essential principle of family organization, but restrained within limits consistent with the essential personal and property rights of wives, and elevated and humanized by the grand principles of the community between spouses. Abolition of all personal servitudes. Freedom of testamentary disposition, restrained, however, by the provisions regulating the legitimate or forced heirship, based on the reciprocal duties of parents and children to each other, established by the law of nature, and forbidding them to disinherit each other without cause. Freedom of contract to all persons sui juris, enforcing the sacredness of obligations by the just principle that all the property of a debtor is the common pledge of his creditors. Simplification of titles to real estate by placing all on a purely allodial or free-hold basis. Prohibition of distinctions between legal and beneficial ownership. Prohibition of that form of trust estates known as substitutions, designed for the perpetuation of great estates by putting them out of commerce and transmitting them intact from one generation to another. Hostility to all restraints, legal or conventional, upon the alienability of property, as contrary to public policy and to the liberty of the individual. . . Its leading characteristic, and the one to which I would call special attention, is the pure spirit of Democracy which informs and permeates its whole tenor. . . It is the most purely Democratic system of law under which any people has ever lived. . . . The framers of our Louisiana Code made minor changes in the Napoleon Code, designed to adapt it to new conditions, to fill up lacunae which had been discovered, and to settle controversies which had arisen, but as a whole, it is substantially a reproduction of the Napoleon Code. The most significant changes were two: First: The simplification of the community system by discarding distinctions between real and personal estate, and by confining it to the community of acquets and gains during marriage. The wisdom of this change is demonstrated by experience, the result being that in Louisiana marriage contracts are rare, and growing rarer, while in France they are almost universal, and their most frequent object is to confine the community within the same limits which are prescribed by the Louisiana Code. Second: And by far the most important of all the extension of the prohibition against substitution so as to embrace the prohibition of all fidei-commissa, the object and effect of which is to abolish and exclude from our law the whole complicated system of English trust estates, which has been the bulwark of class privileges, and the most prolific mother of untold evils. The three principles which are the jewels in the crown of the Civil Code of Louisiana, and which in their far-reaching effects rise above the plane of mere laws into the dignity of veritable institutions, are: the community system between spouses; the system of forced heirship; and the abolition of trust estates. I make bold to say that if our sister States had adopted these institutions when Louisiana did, our Republic would have been free, or at least comparatively free, from some of the greatest perils which today menace its existence. IN an article on "The Rule Forbidding Suits against Receivers without Leave as Applied to Receivers Managing Railroads and Like Corporations," in the current number of the American Law Review, W. A. Coutts says of receiverships: In some respects receiverships exemplify the worst type of socialism-the type, namely, in which the people have no voice in the government which owns and operates all industries and organizes and controls all labor. This is socialism minus democracy, or rather socialism plus absolutism. What sort of laws could be developed under such a régime? Inevitably they would be such laws as a master would prescribe for his servants. What rules will a court promulgate for the management of its employés, a court whose first duty it is to make the operation of the capital it controls "as economical, useful, and just" to its owners as possible. Naturally they will be rules calculated to achieve the avowed object of the receivership, and the court, with its threefold functions of judge, legislator and administrator, is surely clothed with sufficient power to accomplish that object. But the status of the employé in the meantime is undergoing a transitionthe transition, namely, from freedom to slavery. But the relation of the court to the trust is calculated to prejudice his action in adjudicating demands of others than employés. The duty of preserving the property for the beneficiaries would very naturally lead a judge to scrutinize closely, if not suspiciously, every claim that would take precedence of theirs. Of this nature are claims for goods lost in transportation, for damages done to property during the receiver's management, for materials used to repair or improve the property; for personal injuries, received through negligence in the management of the railway, and claims for destruction to property by fire caused by negligence of employés. In fact, claims that would, when satisfied, reduce the receivership property to the injury of the beneficiaries, constitute by far the largest class of claims that arise against a receiver. Every time, then, that such a claim is submitted to the court, it is called on to perform incompatible functions. Its first duty is to preserve the trust property for the beneficiaries, and it cannot allow a claim against the receiver without impairing that property. What must be thought of a rule of law that gives the receiver's court exclusive jurisdiction of such claims? IN closing an article in the American Law Register for August on "The Provability of Tort Claims in Bankruptcy," Stanley Folz says: To summarize the results of this discussion it may be said that under the Act of 1898 tort claims reduced to judgment before the filing of the petition are provable. The rendition of a verdict prior to that time is not sufficient liquidation of such claims to render them provable as liquidated claims. under Section 63, a (1). Tort claims unliquidated when the petition is filed are not provable if they arise from personal torts. When based upon wrongs which enriched the bankrupt the decided cases hold that unliquidated tort claims may be proved under Section 63, a (4), if the claimant can waive his remedy cr delicto and sue in quasicontract. This last right is not conceded without a reservation as to its validity. It is urged that it is created only by a forced and strained construction of the act, by giving to the expression "implied contract" a meaning accorded it in no other statute. Even if this construction be correct, the remedy afforded is scarcely adequate to the relief desired. The right to prove should exist whenever the bankrupt's estate has been enriched by the unjust acquisition or conversion of the claimant's property; but under the most liberal construction of the Act of 1898 the right to prove in such cases exists only when an assumpsit action can be brought upon the tort. IN The Law Times (London), John Ellis writes as follows about "Esperanto for Lawyers": Esperanto, the artificial language invented by Dr. Zamenhof, of Warsaw, is intended to be used merely as a means of international communication. Whilst it gives no encouragement to the notion that all nations should speak one tongue, the idea that everyone should learn a second language for international use is the very foundation of Dr. Zamenhof's creation. In what way does Esperanto effect its purpose? It is marvellously easy to learn. and that by all nations. Its grammar consists of only 16 rules, with no bewildering exceptions or irregularities. These concise rules can be learnt in half an hour. simplicity of English grammar has been outsimplified. The pronunciation is phonetic and euphonious, difficult sounds having been The |