favor such general warrants of attorney and a few cases have gone so far as to hold that where a negotiable note contained a power of attorney authorizing confession of a judgment in favor of the payee, but did not specifically authorize it in favor of assignees or subsequent holders, the power was nevertheless effective to authorize confession of judgment in favor of an indorsee. Jarrett v. Sippely, 175 Mo. App. 197, 157 S. W. 975: Colona v. Parksley Nat'l Bank, 120 Va. 812, 92 S. E. 979. STRIKES, STRIKERS AND STRICKEN-THE KANSAS INDUSTRIAL COURT.* I am going to open this article with a parable. Bill and Joe owned adjoining farms, and, as frequently happens, there was a dispute over the line-fence. Bill thought his fence ought to go over into Joe's farm about four rods; and Joe thought his fence should be over on Bill's farm about four rods, and there is nothing that makes a more acrimonious dispute than a line fence, unless it is a row in a church. One day Bill and Joe met at the line fence. Bill had a gun, Joe had a club, and when it was over, Joe was dead, and his wife was a widow, and his children were orphans. Bill was sent to the penitentiary, and in effect his wife was a widow, and his children were orphans, and the pity of it was, the dispute over the line fence remained just exactly as it was before. The trouble and killing, the sorrow, the grief, the widowhood and orphanage had not determined where the line fence ought to be. But Bill and Joe had a tribunal, a forum into which they could have carried this dispute, and determined where the line fence ought to be. Now, to apply our parable. *This article, by the one who had most to do with drafting the Kansas Industrial Law Bill, is a revision of an address by the author before the Missouri State Bar Association. It is a subject which lawyers and legislators will have much to think about in the immediate future.-EDITOR. Bill owns a factory, or rather, because he is a capitalist, I suppose we ought to refer to him as "William," and Joe works for him-a good many Joes. Joe says to William: "I have got to have more wages." William says, "I am just making both ends. meet; I can't pay you any more." Joe thinks William is lying. Possibly he is-William sometimes does lie. But Joe doesn't know. William doesn't know how Joe is living, or whether he is getting a living wage, and ordinarily he doesn't care, and between them there is a gulf of suspicion and distrust. Now, we will assume that Joe strikes. Of course, nowadays there are not very many strikes on account of wages. Strikes are for many other things. The workingman strikes because he wants shorter hours; because he wants Saturday afternoon off to play golf; he strikes because a metalworker is compelled to carry a plank from one floor to another, thus interfering with the International Amalgamated Association of Carpenters; he strikes in Missouri because in Minnesota some scab is employed in the mines; he strikes because some distinguished Prelate of the Catholic Church wasn't allowed to land in England; he strikes because somebody has gone on a hunger strike in England, or Ireland; he strikes because his sub-boss or walkingdelegate wants to show his authority; or he wakes up in the morning and says, "It is a fine day, let's strike." But we will assume that this is one of the old fashioned strikes for a higher wage. So William shuts his factory, and after a while he puts on "scab" labor, and to protect this "scab" labor and these strike-breakers, he imports guards, professional gunmen, and throws a barb-wire fence around his factory. In a little while, the little savings of the Joes run out, and poverty, hunger and cold invade their homes. Some of the more excitable Joes explode a stick or so of dynamite; shots are fired; some of the Joes are killed, and their wives are widowed and their children become orphans; some of the strikebreakers are killed, their wives are widowed and their children are orphaned. Extra police are put on the job; extra deputies are sworn in, and finally, generally too late, the military is called out, and you and I pay the cost. Innocent by-standers are killed or crippled; property, having nothing on earth to do with the controversy, is destroyed; the city is terrorized, the public peace disturbed and, for a time, disorder and ruin. Finally, when both sides are exhausted, they have an arbitration. There is a kind of a truce fixed up. Joe is given an increase in wages, and William blithely charges the increase to production, and passes it on to you and me, and Jones, he pays the freight-he always does.. But it isn't peace, it is simply a temporary truce, and both sides at once prepare that the general public had any interest in these controversies, although they suffer in common with the disputants and in the upshot, pay most of the cost, would have brought down upon him the condemnation of the general public. On the other hand, to admit that the public has an interest in this controversy, would have been to approve our Industrial Court, or some form of remedial legislation. Now, mark you, so long as you give labor no forum wherein it may bring its troubles and be heard, you have no right to forbid the strike. If the original Bill and Joe had had no forum where they could take their disputes, they would have been justified by taking to arms. After this dispute, with its loss and suffering, is ended this labor line-fence dispute remains the same as the other. NoJoe is getting wages enough, or whether he body knows when it is through, whether is doing an honest day's work, or whether he is a slacker. Nobody knows whether William was running his business in a good, honest American way, or whether he was a for another inevitable conflict. And after In the great debate between Governor Allen and Mr. Gompers, Governor Allen asked Mr. Gompers whether, in such a conflict as I have described, the general publie had any right or interest in the controversy, or whether it was purely a private warfare between Labor and Capital. Mr. Gompers at the time did not answer the question, because he could not. To deny You and I know that it is only by combination and largely by strikes that labor has fought its way out of the long night of servitude and degradation, into recognition of his manhood, into the full light of day, and you cannot blame the laboring man for his superstitious belief that the Strike is the only weapon he has; that only by the strike can he get his rights, and until you give him some tribunal where he can present his wrongs and have redress, you have no right to condemn this right to strike. We, in Kansas, where we are fond of trying experiments, have established what we call the "Industrial Court." I am not going tc go over again the story of the origin, the initiative of the Industrial Court-that has been written elsewhere. attribute of the English Constitution and the Police Power, which was the King's prerogative, has mislead many law writers into separating the administration of justice from the general police power. Our legal purists say these controversies | ministration of justice as an independent are not justifiable. I understand them to mean by this that they are not such controversies as are cognizable of right in courts of general jurisdiction, like the Circuit Court here, or the District Court of Kansas, what we call "Nisi Prius" Courts— I am not just sure about that pronunciation. That is to say, the employe cannot go into court and sue for his higher wages, and the employer cannot go into court and compel the employe to work for a lower wage. But this court is not an Industrial Court; though we call it a "court," the name doesn't mean anything. In the Colonial Days, the Legislative Assembly was often known as the "General Court." I think it is true in some of the Southern states today, and I believe is still true in Massachusetts. It is not a court, it is an administrative body, exercising certain police powers; and before we examine this bill, we had better stop for a moment and consider just what is this police power. You will pardon me if I talk Hornbrook law to you, but I find a great many well informed lawyers are very hazy as to the nature and extent of the police power. Edmond Burke, in one of his sublime orations, said that the whole State and Power of England, its Kings, its Lords and Commons, its Army and its Navy were constituted, ordained and maintained for the purpose of getting twelve honest men into the jury box; that is, the protection of the citizen's life, liberty and property by forms of law instead of by arbitrary power. But the institution and the processes of the courts exhaust but a portion of the police power of the State. A vast reservoir of the police power remains to be administered by the executive arm, what is commonly known as the administrative branch of the Government. And let me say here that a dictum of an early English Court, attempting to distinguish between the ad Courts administer police power by certain long recognized formulae, but it is, nevertheless, the police power of the state that is thus exercised. But after the courts have functioned, there remains a vast domain of police power, exercised by the administrative arm, which deals with the general welfare of the people, education, public health, the maintenance of public peace, public morals and even the comfort and convenience of the city. All of these are under the watchful exercise of the police power. There is this clear distinction between the exercise of the police power by a court, and by the administrative arm. The court is inert until its jurisdiction is sought and invoked by appropriate formulae. A court cannot go out and seize a criminal and try him until a complaint has been presented and a warrant issued. The court cannot collect your debt until a complaint has been filed against the debtor. A court cannot do equity until the equitable jurisdiction has been set in motion by an appropriate Bill. But the administrative arm acts ex propria vigore. (I am quite sure of that pronunciation. I looked it up.) It acts without complaint, without warning and without investigation. It may act upon suspicion or surmise. It has inquisitorial power, power to subpoenae witnesses and compel the production of books and papers without any complaint being filed, wherein it differs from a court. You can not swear a witness in court until there is a legal controversy before the court. The exercise of the police power by the administrative arm is swifter of execution, speedier in action and presents many advantages over the rule-hampered action of the court. That is the reason why we decided to make the Industrial Court an administrative body rather than a judicial body. As a court it would have had advantages. It could punish for contempt; it could exercise its own orders. You cannot confer administrative functions upon a court, but you can confer quasi judicial powers upon an administrative body, the power to investigate, to take evidence, to deliberate, to weigh and to find the facts. These powers can be conferred upon a Legislative Tribunal, or upon its arm, a committee sitting for the purpose of investiga tion. We have had a distinguished example of it recently in the committee of the Senate of the United States which has been investigating campaign expenditures, investigating them so thoroughly that many earnest workers in both parties have found them selves without a job as a result of this investigation. This investigation, with its illuminating evidence, would have been impossible in a court. The administrative arm can anticipate labor troubles and strikes by investigating the conditions surrounding the mine or factory where disputes, and industrial troubles are reaching an acute stage. Before a strike. has been called, before there is an overt act of industrial warfare, it can publish its findings so that the public will know whether the worker is getting a fair wage, working reasonable hours, giving an honest day's work for his wage, and so that the public can know whether the business of the employer can reasonably stand shorter hours or an advance in wages without increasing the price that he charges the consumer. In fact, if these inquisitorial powers of the court were all its powers, these things were all that it could do, it would be worth the cost. We would know where the linefence belongs. Publicity, like the sunlight, is a great germicide. No sociological wrong can stand the light of day. The truth will kill it. If everyone knew the wholesale and the retail cost of the articles which they buy, there would be no profiteering. Whatever doubts there may be as to the constitutionality of some parts of the Industrial Court law, no one has ever questioned the right of the State, under its police. power, to establish this administrative body and give it these inquisitorial powers. It is true, Mr. Howatt, who is now in contempt for refusing to obey the process of the court and testify, has appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, but that court, in the Interstate Commerce Case, in the 154 U. S., has decided every question raised by Mr. Howatt's appeal, against him. Coming now to the question of police power, it is the broadest, the most unlimited, the most illimitable of all the powers of Government. Outside of a limited number of cases, where the police power affects the rights of property, the right to bear arms, public assembly and the freedom of religion, where the police powers are limited. by certain amendments, the only boundaries, the only circumscriptions of that police. power is that the exercise of it must be reasonable, and that it must tend to the public welfare. No respectable court and no text-writer has ever attempted to go further than this in setting boundaries to the power and each case is decided upon the particular and instant question of fact. It may be said that the police power is the end and aim and final object of all civil government, because the end and object of all civil Government is to promote the general welfare and happiness of the citizen, and it is with that that the police power more closely deals. The police power greets you at the threshhold of life, where it prescribes t1 qualifications of the doctor and the nurse who bring you into the world. It follows you to the tomb, where it regulates the cemetery where your ashes are finally interred. And during all the interval from the first puny wail of the new-born child, to the death rattle of the dying, it surrounds you every moment with its invisible, ever present protection. Waking or sleeping, alone or in company, in the crowded street or on the lonely prairie, the police power is there, not merely protecting your life, your liberty and your property, but protecting your health, the morals of your community and safeguarding the comfort and convenience of your daily life. every change of conditions. The police power which adequately regulated the movements of the stage coach, was found sufficient, without any extension of power, by merely adapting established principles to new conditions, to regulate the railroads, the steamboats and the automobile, and shortly it will reach its long arm into the sky and regulate the air lanes and the aviator. Every time a new and dangerous mechanism is invented, whether for labor or pleasure, the police power seizes its control and regulates it for the safety of the public. Its two greatest functions are the protection of the public health and the public peace, and these are the foundations upon which, mainly, the power of the Industrial Court rests. In the first place, the Legislature defines the necessaries of life as food, fuel and clothing. This is not a legislative fiat; it simply recognizes the primal necessities of life in the temperatate zone. A man may live, love and be happy in a tent, a cave, or a dug-out; but to be well, to be healthy, he must have food, fuel and clothes. The State is not concerned with whether a man has one suit of clothes, or a dozen; one meal a day, or five. It is not concerned with whether he has fuel enough to warm a ten-room house, or one room. But it is concerned, and the public health demands, that every family shall have so much food, so much fuel and so much clothing as shall maintain their health, keep them in decent comfort and provide for the sturdy upbringing of the future of the race. The police power is the only power that can take and destroy private property for public benefit, without compensation to the owner. as where it destroys an unsafe or unsanitary building. It is the only power that can destroy the sanctity of a contract, which the Constitution says shall be held sacred. It is the only power that can over-ride a treaty, which the Constitution says shall be the supreme law of the land, and was held in the New Orleans quarantine cases, where a health regulation of the city of New Orleans set aside a treaty stipulation between America and France. It is the most comprehensive and most minute of all the powers of Government. It protects the cattle of the Kansas farmer against Texas fever, and it protects the migratory birds against undue and continuous slaughter. It regulates the length of time that the mill whistle may blow, without undue disturbance to the people and quiet of the neighborhood, and it stops the great liner with its thousands of passengers, at the threshhold of the country, until every individual has proven his right to be admitted upon the ground of his physical and moral health-proaching epidemic of contagious disease. fulness. It is the most flexible of the governmental powers, adjusting itself almost instantly to Whenever a strike, a shut-down, or a lock-out threatens such a shortage in these necessities as endangers the public health, then the State has the same interest in the strike or the lock-out that it has in an ap The State need not wait until the smallpox or yellow fever has invaded a community. It may quarantine against these evils far in |