conceivable thing except a church, whether it was the business of a corporation or an individual against whom there were no judgments. I found it all going on, and that it had been going on from time immemorial. One of the evils of continuing these businesses I found in the case of a sawmill company of whose property a receiver had been appointed in 1890. That business was conducted as long as there was any mill to conduct. After it burned, of course, they ceased to conduct the mill business, but the receiver continued to work in order that he might put in his claim. for compensation at the end of the time, and when I settled the receiver's accounts, as the judge of the superior court of King county, I was able to pay out of the estate of that corporation, which, when it went into the hands of the receiver was easily worth fifty or sixty thousand dollars and twice the amount of indebtedness, forty-eight cents on the receiver's obligations, and the creditors of the corporation never got a cent. The proposition of appointing receivers for the last two or three years has simply run wild, and appointments have been made without consideration and without necessity, and private businesses have been run for years and years by the courts. I will admit that the courts are chargeable with some of the strictures that have been made in that respect, but I must say to those attorneys who cast these strictures that when they get a client who is seeking to hinder, delay and defraud his creditors, about the first thing that he does is to go in and tempt the courts to appoint a receiver.

MR. BROWN-I would like to suggest that attorneys are sworn to protect the interests of their clients, and if attorneys find judges who will appoint receivers, it seems to me it is their duty to make the application. It seems to me, on this question of procedure, that our system has raised up a thing that we are endeavoring to get rid of now. I came here from the State of Maine some time ago. Under our old common law practice, all we had to do was to take a blank and in about five minutes we could fill it up and put our signature to it, and that was the end of the pleading, whether it was a complaint for $100 or $100,000; and when we came into court we passed the writ over to the defendant and he wrote on the back of it "Comes now the defendant and puts himself on the country," and then hands the writ to the plaintiff, and our issues

were all made up, at an expense of three or four pens full of ink and fifteen or twenty minutes writing. It seems to me that the old common law system, if we had it to-day, would just fill the bill that these gentlemen are now asking for. I sincerely and honestly believe it would. There would be none of this stenographic work that we have to pay so much for. There would not be the spending of hours and hours in court in settling motions and demurrers and interrogatories and everything of that sort, but you could come in before the jury and in fifteen minutes try your case. MR. THOMPSON-The question is both one of theory and a practical one. Looking at it from its practical side it is simply a question whether we shall send to our members of congress a report which in the crowding of affairs upon them will never be considered at all and therefore be of no value to us as attorneys representing litigants or to our clients themselves, or whether it is desirable at all that the United States courts should be controlled by a code system instead of the system by which it is now controlled. If it is desirable, whether or not a recommendation to members of congress should not be directed to the bills before congress with some likelihood of passing in order that that step may be taken instead of directing their attention to a voluminous report upon that and such matters as receiverships and everything of that kind. I think myself that the question should be divided and that matter only submitted to them if at all. Personally I am opposed to the whole business. So far as receiverships are concerned I agree with everything that has been said against them and go a good deal further than the gentlemen do. I think receiverships are the abomination of this country and this country has been run about long enough by receivers. But so far as the United States congress adopting our code practice is concerned I do trust that that time will be after I have ceased to practice. It is enough to have one abomination of that kind on our hands without getting two. We have a little relief once in a while by passing out of our code practice and getting before the United States court, and get a sure enough trial before a court and jury and I enjoy, it when I get there, and I am for that reason opposed to this whole matter.

JUDGE HOYT Mr. Chairman, I do not feel called upon to defend the supreme court or their decisions. I presumed that when the

legislature said a thing should be done it must be done, or at least it would require an express statement by the legislature that it should not be done to excuse the doing of it. I thought it could not be dispensed with by some glittering generalities thrown in at the end of the act. That is what the Bar Association seems to want the supreme court to do. They want them to disregard the express direction by the legislature because the legislature at the end of the act has thrown in some generalities about overlooking certain technicalities. It would not be fair to the legislature to assume that the legislature after providing expressly what should be done - although that seems to be the disposition of the bar by their criticism, they seem to think that the supreme court ought to have failed to carry it out. I have more respect as a lawyer and did have, as a member of the supreme court, for the legislature than to assume that when they said a thing should be done, that they meant when they said afterwards that certain technicalities might be overlooked, that they intended to say that the very thing which they had provided should be done should not be done. That is about all I have to say upon that subject. Upon the general proposition before the Association I am not prepared at present myself to vote. I am certainly not prepared to dump this report all into the laps of our members of congress, nor am I prepared to act upon the substitute, suggested by the report itself, that we approve and ask our members in congress to attempt to have passed the two bills referred to. I am, myself, not sufficiently familiar with the subject matter of these bills to be prepared to vote on that question. I think it would be safer and better to leave the matter to a committee, to draft a special report, under the instructions of this Association, to be transmitted to our members in congress.

MR. HARDIN I was in favor of sending this report on to congress, but Judge Hoyt has put it in a new light. He suggested the improvidence of dumping the whole report into the laps of the members of congress. I have had some experience with members of congress, and from what I know of them their laps are usually pretty well occupied otherwise. I think Judge Hoyt's idea is correct, and that the report had better be cut down, and these questions immediately bearing on these matters to be considered by the

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federal legislature be sent, and therefore I am in favor of the suggestion made by him.

THE PRESIDENT—I am inclined to the opinion that the motion in order to be intelligently voted upon should be divided in two parts: First, to adopt the report, and, second, as to the disposition of it. If there is no objection, I will put the first motion, which is as to the adoption of the report.

JUDGE HOYT- If I understood the reading of the report, the adoption of the report will carry with it the adoption of at least certain resolutions- I suppose it would be equivalent to adopting the resolutions, if the report was adopted.

JUDGE HANFORD - If not too late, I would like to say a word. I think whatever recommendations the Bar Association makes in regard to legislation by congress, it ought to be taken with a good deal of deliberation. We ought to make up in our own minds something definite that we want to ask for and be careful that we are not doing more harm than good. There can be no doubt but what some action might be taken that would relieve the practice of some of the burdens-I refer to the practice, of course, in the circuit court of the United States. The burdens of litigants might be relieved to some extent, but there is always danger, when you get a body like the congress of the United States to move once, of going too far. It was forcibly impressed upon my mind, at the late American Bar Association at Saratoga last August, the subject of having a national code was considerably discussed, and members from the west from a good many of the states were very much inclined to favor it. I noticed, however, that the New York lawyers, those who have practiced from the beginning under the code, were inclined to be very conservative, and they called attention to the fact that the state where the greatest burdens rested upon litigants in matters of practice was the State of New York, and that after having first adopted the Field Code, and then employed a commissioner for years at a high salary to work upon it and revise it and amend it, that the work had gone on until the acts of the code involved nearly four thousand pages, and it has become so massive and so burdensome that the lawyers who live and practice in that state are very tired of it. That led to a suggestion as to how far a unification of the laws and a reformation of the practice in the federal

courts might go, and when there was the first suggestion that congress might make inflexible rules of practice to be applied to admiralty, the whole convention almost with one voice was opposed to it, and they were led specially by the leading practitioners of New York city, those who make a specialty of admiralty practice. The suggestion of the legislature putting its hand upon the prac⚫tice in admiralty cases raised a general revolt. Now, there must be some reason why those who have had experience should feel so touched. When the bare suggestion was made that the legislature would be doing harm to even put its hand upon the practice in admiralty cases, and my own reflections upon this subject have led me to about this conclusion: That when the legislature is called upon to act, it is usually by some one who has a case in mind. He has been aggrieved by a decision of the court at some time, and he appeals to the legislature to change the rule that has been applied in his case by a court, and he goes to work at it in a way to have the law made so that it will be rigid and inflexible, and when the court makes a decision, under that kind of a law, that decision is most severely complained of, because the court is required to apply technical rules which dispose of cases, without reference to the merits that are involved. Whatever legislation is attempted affecting the practice of courts, in my judgment, should be of a general character, leaving the court some freedom to act, when it sees the justice of the case, to administer justice instead of being bound by a rigid technical rule, where you must do so and neither deviate to the right nor to the left, in the matter of mere practice. Now, that is what I understand to be the chief merit of the admiralty practice; that the court is free to administer justice as it is made to appear and the right of the parties is considered paramount to any mere rule of practice, as to the manner and means of getting at the right. Now, for that reason, I know that the lawyers that I met who had had the greatest experience in code practice were very much afraid of appealing to congress for a federal code.

THE PRESIDENT --The original motion is now before the Association.

MR. DONWORTH -If there is no objection I would like to move that we indorse and adopt so much of this report as applies to other subjects with the exception of recommending the union of the two