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SECOND DAY.

July 7, 1899.

Association met at 10 A. M.

President Stiles in the chair:

F. H. Brownell, chairman, submitted the following:

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON LEGAL EDUCATION AND ADMISSION TO THE BAR.

At the last meeting of this Association, held in Spokane, your Committee on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar recommended:

1. An amendment of the statutes relating to qualifications for admission to the bar of this state requiring candidates for admission to study law for three years before applying for admission.

2. That as soon as practicable, a department of law be established in our State University, and that the course of instruction therein be for a period of three years.

3. That only persons who have received a general education approximately at least, equivalent to a high school course, shall be admitted into such law school as candidate for a degree.

4. That by the expression "a high school course is meant a course of study beginning at the end of a grammar school course and extending over four full years.

5. That no person shall become a candidate for admission to the bar until he files with the Clerk of the Supreme Court a certificate, signed by at least two members of the bar, in good standing, who have been admitted to practise before the Supreme Court for at least five years, showing that such person had been examined by them and in their judgment is qualified and fitted to take such examination.

6. That all candidates for admission to the bar shall be examined in open court by the judges thereof.

7. That a committee of this Association be appointed to see that the matters herein are properly brought to the notice of the members of our next Legislature.

This report was adopted and your committee was instructed to carry out the suggestions and properly present the same to the Legislature of 1899.

Your committee found itself unfortunately situated during the session of the Legislature. Its chairman was in New York during the entire

session of the Legislature and for some time prior thereto; the Hon. H. E. Hadley, also a member of the committee, was busy holding a prolonged term of court, and E. B. Leaming, another member, had removed to San Francisco. Major A. S. Cole, the only remaining member of the committee, was in Olympia for a time during the session of the Legislature, and as understood between himself and other members of the committee gave this matter attention, but became satisfied before leaving Olympia that nothing would be done in the premises by that session. It is fair to your committee, however, to state that the matter was brought before the Legislature, but probably from lack of the necessary pushing did not materialize in a statute.

Your committee notes with pleasure that steps have been taken to establish a department of law at the State University and that, in all probability, such department will be placed in running operation at the next term, commencing in September of this year. We believe that this law school should receive the especial attention of the Washington State Bar Association, and would recommend your Committee on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar be requested to visit the said law school during the next year and to report at the next session of this institution the result of their observations.

We would also recommend that the committee on this subject be requested to again bring the recommendations adopted at the last Bar Association before the next legislature in the shape of a bill and secure its adoption. And, inasmuch as experience has shown that a bill of this nature is apt to become sidetracked, we would recommend that your committee be instructed, on behalf of the Association, to send a letter to each member of the Legislature calling his special attention to the matter and requesting his support.

Respectfully submitted.

T. H. BROWNELL,
H. E. HADLEY,
ALBERT S. COLE.

THE PRESIDENT There is a suggestion that this matter, the matter of the recommendation made at the last meeting of this Association, be continued with the preceding committee on this subject, and that action thereon be urged at the session of the Legislature in 1901.

MR. STERN- Mr. President, in this connection I was unable to be present at our last meeting and took occasion to write a letter to the Secretary of the Association, more particularly in respect to the disbarment of members of our profession who had been guilty of unprofessional conduct; and if this matter is to be postponed until next year or, if possibly there may be a further discussion of

this matter, I believe that matter should be brought to the attention of the Association. I hardly know why we shirk a responsibility that is placed upon every member of this Association. I took occasion, at that time, to call attention to the fact that it was impossible for us to procure the disbarment of our members except through the aid of the Association. We have at different times tried, in Eastern Washington, to bring it to the Court's attention, and have committees appointed in regard to certain members whose conduct had been criminal. These reports have slumbered and the offenders continue their evil practices.

Now, if this Association has any purpose whatsoever, it seems to me that the best service it can subserve is that such committee formulate some practical method whereby these offending members may be disbarred. If we are to postpone this report for another year

to give this committee life for another year something should be done in the direction I have indicated.

MR. ROWELL I move you that a standing committee of three be appointed by the President to hold office for one year, or until a committee is appointed for that purpose, the committee to be known as the Committee on Law Schools.

After being amended so as to apply to the standing Committee on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar, the motion was carried.

Mr. George H. Walker then read before the Association his paper on the subject: "What Shall be Done About the Trusts?'' (See Appendix.)

MR. MCGILVRA-Mr. President, the subject of this paper being now before the Association, I will try to start the ball of discussion rolling by a few suggestions in regard to the subject. The subject of the paper that has just been read is probably the most important subject that will ever come before this Bar Association, and is peculiarly proper for its consideration, as well as being the most important matter, as stated, before the American people, if not the world to-day. No political party has been so hardy—or so fool-hardy, I should say, perhaps, -as to espouse the cause of the trusts. Another feature connected with the trusts is that the instrumentalities used to create and promote them are corporations. A corporation is an artificial person created by the law, and cer

tainly if there is any class of persons that should be regulated and controlled by the strong arm of the law, it is corporations, the creatures of the law itself; and yet, as a matter of fact, there are no persons that are so absolutely, to a limited extent at least, beyond the control of the law. There is no class of natural persons that sets the law at defiance as do corporations; and that seek and succeed, at times, in corrupting, I had almost said, all the departments of government. But I think it is fair and true as yet to make an exception of the judicial department. As yet the judicial department of the United States is not to be considered in that respect. It is a subject certainly of great congratulation to the people at large that such is the fact. Now, of course, as has been stated, we cannot undertake to revolutionize or resist the laws of nature or the laws of trade, which are almost the same. It is true, as has been so forcibly stated, that old things are passing away and we are confronted by a new condition of things. We realize it among those things in actual practice. To-day it seems to be a fact that competition, which in former times was said to be the life of trade, is passing away. Competition is actually wiped out of existence by these monopolies, because every monopoly controls the production and the sale. They have the absolute control. The Standard Oil Company to-day has the absolute control of the production and disposition of the article of oil. So it is with sugar; so it is with steel; and it would be easier and occupy less time to state what is not controlled to-day by those trusts than what is. But the question which has been so forcibly put, and which is the subject of consideration properly at the present moment by this Bar Association, and by the nation and by the world, and the greatest question, in my opinion, which has ever been presented in our day, is how to regulate, remedy or control the evil- because it is a conceded fact, about which there should be no dispute, that this is an evil. I think we may go further and say that it is a threatening pall that hangs over this land to-day, if not over the entire world. And the evil consists in this: that the great mass of the property and power of the land is passing into the hands of the few, and the great masses are becoming dependent and powerless. If this condition of things goes on the mass of the people will be practically slaves. It was said, I think, something like eighty

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years ago by the greatest man that America has ever produced (I refer, of course, to Daniel Webster), in one of his speeches wherein he refers to the history of New England and the history of this country, where he takes the position-and for which he suffered immediately afterwards that the property of the country and the proper distribution of the property of the country has more to do with the liberty and the welfare of the people than all else combined, and refers to the fact, particularly in New England, that there are but few rich and no poor, and congratulates the country upon the fact that, owing to the situation and the circumstances, the wealth of the country was evenly distributed.

He states, among other things, that every farmer, every individual, every elector, can go to church or to a public meeting in his own carriage, of some kind, and at that time there were no millionaires, you may say. At any rate, you could count them upon the fingers of one hand; and I can remember the time when it would not take the fingers of both hands to count them in this country. These things are being changed, and there can be do doubt that in a country where the wealth is anywhere evenly distributed among the people, it is a safeguard to the liberty and a surety to the happiness of the people.

And, among other things-and that operates to day in this country the absence of trusts in the old term and the primogeniture laws, property is distributed in the natural course of events, and it is fair to take into consideration that the very property of these millionaires that we have to-day will be distributed to some extent and therein, perhaps, lies the greatest hope that we have to-day against the creation and establishment of classes in this country.

We have got to come back to the point, and I feel that I must not dwell too long upon this feature. The corporations are the instruments and the creatures of the law, and we are all lawmakers of this country. Every elector is a sovereign; his voice is just as potent in the affairs of the nation as that of the president of the United States.

Now, can it be possible that with universal suffrage, that the people, when once aroused, when they once feel that they are fighting for their lives and the lives of their children, can find no way or means to control this very influence, these combinations of cor

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