lawyer. The remedy for dishonesty in the legal profession, at least under the advocacy system, is in a reawakening of business conscience. I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier. TH HE popular song of the same caption as the above bids fair to be heard in the court room, if the suggestion made in some quarters is carried out, that all boys of a certain age shall be given military training in the schools, including field service during vacation. We waive the question of advisability and expediency, including the arguments of the necessity of preparedness on the one hand and of the dangers of militarism on the other. But we have solemnly declared by constitutional mandate that there shall be no such thing as involuntary servitude in the United States. This declaration has generally been accepted as merely a constitutional affirmation of the emancipation proclamation. Jury service and various exercises of the police power have passed almost unquestioned. But in recent years the so-called peonage cases have proved that "involuntary servitude" as used in the Thirteenth Amendment means more than "slavery," and it would seem that some mother, or, perchance, even some father, might challenge any attempt at conscription in times of peace. However, it has frequently been declared that constitutions must grow and expand with the changing needs of the nation, and the chances are that a law conscripting the boys into the service would be sustained if enacted and challenged in these war-mad days. Bar Examinations. M ASSACHUSETTS is having its meed of trouble over the examination for admission to the bar of the state. When the legislature, last year, deprived the Supreme Court and the Board of Bar Examiners of the right to fix the nature and extent of the examination and lowered very materially the standard that had been set, we commented on this ill-advised effort of a legislative body to regulate the details of admission to a highly trained and specialized profession. A bill has now been introduced in the legislature to repeal the act of 1915 and leave the determination of the fitness of candidates for admission to the bar to the profession itself, subject to the supervision of the Supreme Court, where it properly belongs. Though we cannot agree with some of the critics of the act of 1915, that the low standard of general educational qualifications required by the act of candidates who wish to stand the bar examination proper would result in a bar of "half-educated and half-Americanized shysters," it cannot be denied that the better educated, the better the bar. In this connection it is interesting to note the argument advanced that the public need not expect great growth of legal reform until lawyers themselves become better. Professor Roscoe Pound and other notable jurists in a report on the subject have said: "So long as the public in so many of our jurisdictions insists upon treating the practice of the law as a mode of earning a livelihood which should be open to everyone, and refuses to exact those requirements of preliminary education and thorough professional training which are required not merely to make the lawyer an efficient agent in the public adminisistration of justice through honest presentation of causes, but also to make him an effective public servant through initiation and promotion of improvements in legal institutions and doctrines, attempts at reform addressed only to improvements in judicial machinery will be quite futile." Massachusetts, however, is not alone in its difficulties over the standard of the bar examinations. The Maryland legislature has before it a bill looking to the same end, though this bill originated in the Baltimore Bar Association and is designed to raise the standard of admission. It provides, among other requirements, that the candidate must be able to write legibly and spell correctly. Probably the youthful aspirant fresh from school may pass this barrier with ease, but we would not like to guarantee that all the members of any Bar Association would emerge from such an examination with gayly flying colors. A lawyer may be able to write legibly or to spell correctly, but how many of us can do both? Rights of Purchaser of Theater Ticket. TH HE Biblical injunction to judge not that ye be not judged has been applied with a vengeance by a theatrical syndicate in New York to an unfortunate dramatic critic who was so bold as to criticise adversely one of their productions. Say they, judge not unfavorable that ye be not forever barred the joys (?) and privileges of our playhouses, and they have successfully invoked the aid of the courts to enforce their injunction. While to the lay mind it may seem a senseless and unjust law that permits a proprietor of a theater to exclude from his house of amusement one to whom he has sold a ticket, solely through personal whim or caprice, it is well known to lawyers that, in the absence of statutory regulation, the sale of a ticket of admission to a theater or place of amusement is a mere revocable license. The purchaser may entrance and he refuses to depart on request, he becomes be refused admittance, or if the license is revoked after a trespasser and may be removed by such force as may be necessary to overcome his resistance, and his only recourse is an action to recover the price paid for the ticket. The Court of Appeals of New York followed this wellsettled rule in a case recently decided when it sustained the right of an amusement syndicate to exclude from its playhouse a critic who had previously found fault with one of its productions. The absolute dominion possessed by the owner over his place of amusement was well stated in a somewhat similar case that arose in Wash ington wherein the court said: "The law imposes no duty upon the proprietor as to whom he shall give or refuse admission. It presumes that his own interest will insure proper treatment to those whom he may invite, by advertisement or otherwise, to his place of entertainment or amusement, but there is no rule for his guidance except clude one because he is objectionable to the patrons of his his own judgment and sense of propriety. He may explace; he may deny another admission because his dress or personal appearance is such as to attract attention from the performance, or interfere with its progress in the mananother, as in the present case, because of alleged objecner he desires to have it conducted, and he may refuse tionable conduct on a former occasion. All of these matters are within the exclusive control of the proprietor," and he might have added that the proprietor could exclude or eject one because of the color of his hair or the cut of his garments, and been equally within the law. The one faint dissent from this apparently harsh rule of the common law is found in a dictum in a Pennsylvania case where it was said: "We incline to the opinion, however, that as the purchasers and holders of tickets for particular seats, they had more than a mere license. Their right was more in the nature of a lease, entitling them to peaceable ingress and egress and exclusive possession of the designated seats during the performance on that particular evening." Drew v. Peer, 93 Pa. St. 234. This construction would doubtless find ready assent in the minds of the public, and particularly of that portion who make their living by praising or damning the efforts of those who seek to amuse for a money consideration, but the rule is too well settled to give hope for a change through judicial interpretation. However, the public have the remedy in their hands if they choose to exercise it. The common law presents no terrors to the average legislature, and it may attach such conditions to the right to conduct amusement enterprises as it may see fit so long as they are within reason. The federal government has by statute prohibited the exclusion of anyone on account of his race or color, and New York and other states have followed suit by various legislative enactments, but unfortunately for the dramatic critic excluded in New York the statute of that state is limited to the grounds of "race, creed or color" and any discrimination not based on one of these grounds is governed by the common law. SHAKESPEARE AND THE LAW. A TERCENTENARY OBITER. It is something anomalous to celebrate the death of an immortal, but Shakespeare was anomalous in all things. No authentic record marks his birth, but his life and death gave to the world, in the supremest productions of the human mind, the greatest birth of time. This is the significance of the tercentenary celebration of his death to be observed throughout the nation on the twenty-third day of April. Universal genius compels universality of homage. Colleges, learned societies, authoritative critics, essayists, orators, poets, artists, all will unite in tribute. Musicians -for Shakespeare's soul was attuned to "the music of the spheres❞— will respond with antiphonal symphony, while the stars of the histrionic firmament, in a sense the especial custodians of the Shakespearean ark of the covenant, will shed their radiance over all. Even the doctors (always in at the death) with Shakespeare's anticipation of Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, as their point of departure, will reinterpret the medical knowledge of the poet. What about the lawyers-men of noble minds, mental cosmopolites, citizens of the intellectual world? Is this tercentenary to be treated by them as Mrs. Quickly was by Falstaff, that is to say, "fubbed off"? That were a sad reflection, for Shakespeare is peculiarly the lawyer's own. The productions of no other writer of ancient or modern times, excepting only the jurists, are so permeated and saturated with the language and the very spirit of the law, as are his. These, the noblest creations in all literature, exhibit not only an astonishing familiarity with legal technical terms and phrases, but a knowledge of the principles and the technicalities of the common law, so sure and so profound, that it seems never to have fallen into error. And this knowledge was not limited to substantive law, but extended to the rules of forensic practice whether in chambers or in the courts of Westminster Hall. The editor of the Law Times declared, some years ago, that although he knew something of law, yet he was not ashamed to confess that he had not sufficient legal knowledge or mental capacity to enable him fully to comprehend a quarter of the law contained in the plays. The stupendous mass of Shakespearean exegesis is appalling. It stands in relation to the plays about as Falstaff's bread did to his sack. Some of it is great, much of it is excellent, but most of it is a monument to criticasters and asininity. And although some of it that is excellent was written by lawyers, notably our own Furness, yet, surprising as it may seem, even these have failed, or rather neglected, to interpret the most essential element, aside from the philosophical and spiritual content, of the plays. The writer has neither present intention nor skill to attempt an amend of the deficiency, but he may perhaps, particularly at this time, without risking the imputation of impudent immodesty, consider in a general way Shakespeare's attitude toward lawyers and his knowledge of the law, as revealed by the intrinsic evidence of the plays themselves. Burke said that the end and aim of the whole machinery of government was to get twelve honest men in the jury box. And yet this glorious aim would be a consummated futility were there no lawyers or judges to present the facts or to interpret the law. So the lawyer is a necessary evil or an evil necessity in every society, and thus we find him, from the dawn of civilization, when the laws were believed to be the gift of the gods, to the present time. But, sad to relate, always and universally do we find him attacked by literary genius as an enemy to society, ridiculed as a parasite and denounced and reviled as something little better than a criminal and much worse than a rogue. This, with a few honorable exceptions, among them Scott and Shakespeare. Glance at the latter's contemporary, rare Ben Jonson. "No cause, nor client fat, will Cheveril leese In his play "The Fox" he gives us the despicable lawyer Voltore, and this is his general description of a lawyer: "I oft have heard him say how he admired And so, usque ad nauseam, throughout the Elizabethans. Beaumont and Fletcher vent their spite in "The Little French Lawyer;" Congreve paints the lawyer "with an itching palm" through whom more souls were damned by the Bible in Westminster Hall, than were saved by it in Westminster Abbey; Wycherly gives him the dissolute morals of his time; Farquhar pictures the rascal Subtleman who thought nothing was against conscience unless the cause were thrown out of court. Pursue the lawyer to Horace, to Martial, Terence, Juvenal, and we find him the target of their jokes, the object of their jibes and flings. Return to Swift and he is impaled on an epigram or satirized in Gulliver. Open Pope and we see him crucified on a dunghill. There is no escape. Go to two extremes, to the obscene jester Rabelais and to the serene and ethereal Shelley,-to the former the lawyer is a "terrible and dreadful master," a "furred cat," and the latter curses the chancery court and the chancellor as "the earth-consuming hell, Of which thou art a demon." And what character could be more revolting than the modern "stage attorney"? Boucicault set the fashion two generations ago, and since then the dramatic carpenters and joiners have depicted him as the incarnation of everything that is mean and base. Dickens despised both courts and lawyers, actually knew little about either, and caricatured both. It is a consolation to recall that Dr. Johnson, the literary Olympian Jove, was kindlier. He has been thus "Boswellized:" "I asked Dr. Johnson whether, as a moralist, he did not think the practice of the law, in some degree, hurt the nice feeling of honesty." Johnson: "Why, no sir, if you act properly. You are not to de ceive your clients with false representations of your opinion; you are not to tell lies to a judge." Boswell: "But what do you think of supporting a cause which you know to be bad?" Johnson: "Sir, you do not know it to be good or bad till the judge determines." But Scott, who was a lawyer, clerk of court, and a magistrate, and who knew more about law and lawyers than all these others combined, shows a love and admiration for the profession, "his brothers," throughout. And so in Shakespeare, despite the example of his predecessors and of his illustrious contemporaries, we find a refreshing absence of this hostility. In the second part of Henry VI., Cade realizes he must first "kill the lawyers" if he is to reform the laws, a distinct compliment, and Hamlet's apostrophe to the skull-"Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddets now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures and his tricks?"—falls with pleasant pathos on the ear. Shakespeare's knowledge of the law is shown by his usage of technical legal terms,-not fugitive words which a layman might catch on the fly, learn by ear and repeat with a seeming show of learning. The precision with which they are applied, the audacity with which they are employed in a fanciful play upon words, in an antithetical thought or a felicitous metaphor, prove that he knew them in all their essential significance. Run over the pages of his works in the most haphazard and casual manner and the eye, cognizant of legal terms, will be delighted and surprised with the "luminous points" at every turn. "Videlicet," "hold in capite," "tenures," "goods and chattels," "as aforesaid," "livery in deeds," "surety," "bond," "fee-simple," "jointure," "forfeiture," "letterspatent," "action on the case," "and whereas," "enter an action," "arraign," "attorneys general," "advised by counsel," "by these presents," "cited to appear," "ad_ journ court," "enfeoffed," "factor," "estates in common," "severalty,' "court adjourned," "crier," "oyez," and scores of others passim. And if the reader of the plays is so fortunate as to be read in the law he will observe that the words and phrases, however extended in a rhetorical sense, are employed with all the aptness of a jurist in their precise legal connotation, and more, that they frequently embody correct rules of law. Many read Shakespeare, few study him, and peradventure, the lawyer, absorbed in the emotional or purely intellectual content of the plays, overlooks their legal significance. Volumes have been written on domestic relations and the status of women at the common law. In the second scene of the fifth act of The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare expounds the correct doctrine in a few lines. In Snyder v. Snyder (1879, Common Pleas, Lackawanna County, Pa.) on the question of the custody of children as between parents, the court cited Shakespeare as authority, as follows: "This," continued the court, "which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of a woman, is poetry, but at the same time law. The man who uses this power to burden and not assist his wife becomes a tyrant, and not a husband. The woman who seeks no counsel from her husband, sets up her own authority against his, and does not with love yield him homage and respect, has yet to learn the true nature of the relation into which she has entered." Shakespeare's trial scenes are void of error either in law or procedure. Turn to the one best known, the case of Shylock v. Antonio, reported in the fourth act of The Merchant of Venice. The scene is a court of justice, and from the moment when the defendant Antonio announces himself "ready" for the trial and the plantiff Shylock is "called," down to the time of judgment, there is no technical mistake. Shylock said "I crave the law." "By those words," says Von Ihering in his "Struggle for Law," "the poet has described the relation of law in the subjective to law in the objective sense of the term in a manner better than any philosopher of law could have done it. Those four words change Shylock's claim into a question of the law of Venice." There has been much lugubrious lay comment on the judgment in this trial, denouncing the denial of the right to shed blood in cutting the pound of flesh as a fraud upon the Jew, accomplished by quibbling and subterfuge. But every lawyer knows that the bond, even if it were not void as against public policy and good morals, had been extinguished by a proper tender. The trial by battle under the common law as given in Richard II, is in accord with authority, and in King John, in the trial between the brothers, the King properly decides for the legitimacy of Philip, upon the ground that he was born in wedlock. This is in accord with the old common-law principle of the absolute presumption of legitimacy where the child was born during coverture. Unless it was affirmatively shown that the husband was absent during the entire period of gestation, the presumption was not subject to rebuttal. Shakespeare also seems to have been acquainted with the "Selected Series" of his day. The dialogue between the diggers of Ophelia's grave has been variously regarded, but actually it is a burlesque of the case of Hales v. Petit, reported by Edmund Plowden, the greatest lawyer of his time, in his selected cases, Les Comentaries. Under the common law a sheriff was liable for an escaped prisoner. In The Comedy of Errors (IV. 4) we find, "He is my prisoner; and if I let him go, The debt he owes will be required of me." Wrested from their context, the legal phraseology of many passages stands out in clear and bold significance, and the lawyer whose interest prompts him will find that they often interpret or deftly apply some rule of the common law. Space suffices for but a very few, illustrating the use of abstract legal terms in the poetical manner but without loss to the sense of their legal value and import. "Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge of thine own cause," (Twelfth Night); "Nay, let him alone, I'll go another way to work with him; I'll have an action of battery against him, if there be any law in Illyria" (Twelfth Night); "The spirit of wantonness is, sure, scared out of him; if the devil have him not in fee-simple, with fine and recovery, he will never, I think, in the way of waste, attempt us again" (The Merry Wives of Windsor); [Shallow] "Sir Hugh, persuade me not; I will make a Star-Chamber matter of it; if he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, Esquire. [Slender] In the county of Gloster, justice of peace and Coram. [Shallow] Ay, cousin Slender, and a gentleman born, who writes himself Armigero in any bill, warrant, quittance or obligation" (The Merry Wives of Windsor); [First officer] "This is the man; do thy office [Second officer] Antonio, I arrest thee at the suit of Count Orsino" (Twelfth Night); [Adr.] "Why, man, what is the matter? [Dro. S.] I do not know the matter; he's 'rested on the case" (The Comedy of Errors); "Thou hast suborned the goldsmith to arrest me" (The Comedy of Errors); "Go with me to a notary, seal me there your single bond" (The Merchant of Venice); “Summons a session, that we may arraign our most disloyal lady; for as she hath been publicly accused, so shall she have just and open trial" (The Winter's Tale); "Black as the ink that's on thee! senseless bauble, Art thou a feudary for this act" (Cymbeline); "I'll amerce you with so strong a fine" (Romeo and Juliet); ""Tis deeds must win the prize; and he, of both, that can assure my daughter's greatest dower shall have Bianca's love" (The Taming of the Shrew); "Keep the oath that we administer" (Richard III.); "Those precepts cannot be served" (Henry IV.); "Enfeoff'd himself to popularity" (Henry IV.); "Master Fang, have you entered the action?" (Henry IV.); "And our indentures tripartite are drawn" (Henry IV.); “Sir, for a quart d'écu he will sell the fee-simple of his salvation, the inheritance of it; and cut the entail from all remainders and a perpetual succession for it perpetually" (All's Well That Ends Well). The language of the law is a universal nightmare, and vast stretches of legal literature are as arid as the wastes of Sahara. But in the immeasurable genius of Shakespeare this very language becomes the luminous instrument of poetic creations, regenerating itself in forms of glowing beauty, expressing and interpreting alike the sublimest thoughts of the human mind, and the hopes and fears, the aspirations and passions of the human heart. Surely this is a precious legacy to the men-and the Portias of the law, and at this tercentenary, and future centenaries that will carry the name of Shakespeare to remotest time, the lawyer, as the sympathetic interpreter and jealous conservator of the Shakespearean revelation, should be foremost in voicing and justifying the idolatrous veneration of the world. OTTO ERICKSON. CONFERENCE RULINGS OF THE FEDERAL TRADE THE uncertainty inevitable to a new system of industrial regulation has led to a number of inquiries addressed to the Federal Trade Commission as to the interpretation placed by it on the Federal Trade Commission Act (Fed. St. Ann. Pamph. Supp. No. 1, p. 60) and the Clayton Act (Fed. St. Ann. Pamph. Supp. No. 1, p. 118). In response to these the Commission has issued a number of rulings, which, while perhaps not of binding. authority, are invaluable as outlining to some extent the views of the Commission on matters likely to come before it. The rulings thus far made either on inquiries or on complaints presented to the Commission are here presented for the benefit of our readers. 1. Public interest-Competitive method discontinued.-On application for the issuance of a complaint, it appeared that a corporation engaged in the refining and sale of cane sugar, whose principal market is in the State in which its refinery is located, alleged that a larger corporation, having refineries located in other States and disposing of its product in interstate commerce in many States, refined and sold exclusively in the State of the applicant and in competition with it sacked sugar which is branded "pure cane fine granulated sugar." The applicant alleged that this sugar is not a standard fine granulated sugar as the branding leads consumers as well as many in the trade to believe, but is what is known as "off" sugar in the manufacture of which an expensive part of the refining process which is necessary to extract the final residue of from 2 to 3 per cent of molasses is omitted; that this "off" sugar is sold to jobbers at about 10 cents per hundred pounds less than the market price for standard granulated sugar; and that by reason of the alleged false brand or label on the sacks, retailers and consumers are deceived into the belief that they are buying granulated sugar equal to standard. As a result, the applicant stated, it was compelled to meet the competition of this "off" sugar in the sale of its standard fine granulated sugar, in the manufacture of which it uses the complete refining process, a part of which its competitor omits in manufacturing the "off" sugar. Upon consideration of the above allegations, the commission, having instituted an investigation, and shortly thereafter the corporation complained of having issued a notice to the trade announcing that it had discontinued the sale of the "off" brand of sugar, and the applicant requesting to be permitted to withdraw its application, and the corporation complained of assuring the commission that it had discontinued the sale of sugar branded in the manner complained of and had no intention of resuming the sale of this package: Held, That the method of competition complained of having been permanently discontinued, it does not appear to the commission that a proceeding by it in respect thereof would be to the interest of the public. 2. Public interest-Competitive method discontinued.—On application for the issuance of a complaint, it appeared that a manufacturer engaged in interstate commerce issued a publication in which, under the guise of trade news, misinformation of a character unfair and detrimental to the applicant's business was circulated. Upon investigation by the commission the applicant advised that the use of the alleged unfair method had been discontinued; and the party complained of assured the commission that its policy had changed with a change of management and no such practice would in the future be engaged in either against the applicant or any other competitor. Held, That the method of competition complained of having been permanently discontinued, it does not appear to the commission that a proceeding by it in respect thereof would be to the interest of the public. 3. Public interest-Competitive method discontinued.—On application for the issuance of a complaint, it appeared that a typewriter rebuilding company engaged in interstate commerce had circulated among dealers in various States a letter falsely stating that a competitor's factory in the Middle West had been removed to the East, and that for this reason many of its customers in Central and Western States would make new arrangements for obtaining typewriters. The party complained of subsequently advised the commission that the statement when made was believed to be true. It also sent a letter of retraction to all dealers receiving the first communication, and assured the commission of its readiness to take any further action deemed necessary. The applicant, being advised of these facts, suggested that no further action be taken. Held, That the method of competition complained of having been permanently discontinued, it does not appear to the commission that a proceeding by it in respect thereof would be to the interest of the public. 4. Public interest-Competitive method discontinued.-On application for the issuance of a complaint, it appeared that a manufacturer engaged in interstate commerce sent out a printed circular containing an alleged letter to it by a dissatisfied customer of the applicant, disparaging the quality of applicant's product, which letter the applicant charged was fictitious. Upon investigation the commission received assurances from the concern complained of that it had discontinued the publication of the circular in question, and that in future it would not in its advertising matter refer in any way to the products of its competitors. Held, That the method of competition complained of having been permanently discontinued, it does not appear to the commission that a proceeding by it in respect thereof would be to the interest of the public. 5. Public interest-Competitive method discontinued.—On application for the issuance of a complaint, it appeared that an association of wagon peddlers, competing with a jobber, had, by threats of boycott, prevailed on a manufacturer engaged in interstate commerce to refuse to sell to such jobber. Shortly after an investigation was started the commission was advised by the jobber that the manufacturer had resumed selling to it. Assurances were also given the commission by the manufacturer that the jobber would not in future be denied the privilege of buying from it by reason of the threatened boycott. Held, That the matter having been satisfactorily adjusted as between the parties, it does not appear to the commission that a proceeding by it in respect thereof would be to the interest of the public. 6. Exclusive territory-Refusal to sell.-On application for the issuance of a complaint, it appeared that a manufacturer engaged in interstate commerce, having designated an exclusive dealer in a certain local territory, refused to sell to another dealer within this territory. It further appeared that such exclusive dealer was under no obligation to refrain from dealing in the products of other manufacturers of the same commodity. Held, That neither the Federal Trade Commission Act nor the Clayton Act prohibits manufacturers selling their product exclusively through one dealer in a given territory. A refusal to sell to others in such territory, under such circumstances, is, therefore, not unlawful. 7. Manufacturers engaged in interstate commerce, irrespective of the size of their business, and all wholesalers so engaged, subject to Clayton Act.-On inquiry: Held, That all manufacturers engaged in interstate commerce, irrespective of the size of their business, and all jobbers or wholesalers thus engaged, are subject to the provisions of the Clayton Act. 8. The right of one manufacturer engaged in interstate commerce to buy out a competitor, and jurisdiction of the commission in such matters. —On inquiry as to the right of one manufacturer to buy out a competitor in the same line of business: Held, That the only jurisdiction of the commission in respect of such transactions is to enforce the provisions of section 7 of the Clayton Act prohibiting the acquisition by any corporation engaged in interstate commerce of the capital stock, in whole or in part, of another corporation thus engaged, where the tendency of such acquisition may be to substantially lessen competition between such two corporations, or to restrain interstate commerce, or to create a monopoly; and also possibly to enforce section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, if such purchase either of property or of capital stock in connection with other circumstances might constitute an unfair method of competition. Held, also, That the mere purchase of the property of such competitor other than capital stock is not prohibited by the Clayton Act or the Federal Trade Commission Act. As to the validity of such purchase of property or capital stock under the Sherman Act, the commission expresses no opinion. 9. Exclusive agency.-On inquiry by a piano manufacturer whether the following clause in a "consignment agreement" is in contravention of the Clayton Act, to wit: Item 3. The factor shall offer, sell, or lease the pianos consigned to him by the consignor only to persons residing in the |