Should DESERVE CONFIDENCE.

Every lawyer also should have and deserve the confidence of the community. He should be worthy of the confidence of the weak and ignorant, as well as the business men. He should be approached with the same confidence that the penitent has when going to the confessional. He should safely invest and preserve the inheritances and insurance money received by inexperienced persons, whether male or female.

He should also always regard himself as a member of the community, and just as much responsible for the suppression of crime, and the enforcement of law, as any other good citizen. There is no merit in acquitting a thief, burglar, robber or murderer. And I doubt the propriety of a lawyer exerting himself in the defense of a defendant charged with a grave crime, if he knows his client to be guilty, and that he is of a criminal disposition. He should never forget the difference between a criminal who is an enemy of society, and one who through the heat of passion, or from other mitigating causes, may be prosecuted for an offense.

A lawyer should avoid anything that may reflect upon his character or his reputation. He should avoid "snitching." No dollar of any other person should ever find lodgment in his pocket. He should so conduct himself that after he becomes old in practice, and the sear and yellow leaf of life appears, his reflections upon his past life can find a life well spent. So that he may see as he looks back, no blur, no discreditable act, nothing that will cause him sorrow or regret. He should ever be alive to the interests of the community in which he resides. A fault of many leading and capable lawyers, is in following a supposed public sentiment, sought to be created by the vehement clamor of the lawless. Wrong doing always has advocates who hope to benefit themselves by deceiving the people. And good men are often deceived and submit for a time, largely for want of courage and through

timidity, shirking the responsibility and fearing to offend.

Yet history teaches us that all efforts of courageous men for a healthy tone in society, now known as "Civic righteousness," meets with immediate encouragement by a large majority of the community. Such men may frequently think themselves in the minority because of the silence and timidity of friends. But the inning is sure to come. Such men should, however, avoid being regarded as reformers or fanatics and above all, keep above the worst detriment of good-ridicule. All this requires consistent and persistent efforts for higher ideals in the profession, and in the tone of society.

How little we know of society. It controls the world. It is omipotent in all governments. All it needs to do is, to act. The Seige of the Bastile was an unorganized and apparently unreasonable effort of French society, that changed all the governments of Europe, and the proletariat, another name for society, is doing for Russia now, what it did more than a century ago for France. So, I advise you to stay near and help cultivate the healthy "grass roots."

KANSAS.

I am speaking to Kansans. To those who have grown up in a State that was born in a revolution; that had a conflict from its inception; where men had to fight in order to stay. The early pioneer who came to Kansas to make it his home, had the courage of his convictions. The falterer, the compromiser, the timid and the coward, were not among these early pioneers. They were men of courage and determination. Few of them thought at that time, that the conflict would extend beyond the Kansas territory.

Not every one who came, remained. Some went farther out on the frontier; others went back to their wife's people; some sought other locations, while others were stricken down in the conflict, and still others succumbed to the struggle, and passed away

from disease and privation. The sturdiest alone remained.

I don't believe they contemplated the fact, that they were the founders of a great state. They built better

than they knew.

Brightened in mind and in spirit by the free air and the waving grass of the boundless prairies, they grew broader and better each year. Like all of the AngloSaxon race, they organized counties, townships and school districts, and using a law of their own making, punished transgressors and evil doers in a summary way. But soon established courts and recognized the force of law, and Kansas became one of the most lawabiding places on the face of the earth.

Kansas always does things. The scope of mind produced by these early environments had no limit. It was as boundless as the prairie, and as board as the heavens, and can be best illustrated by a humorous incident recorded in the Congressional Record.

I can not give the words of the Record, but it shows that a conflict arose between Senator Ingalls and Senator Howe of Wisconsin, in the United States Senate, Senator Ingalls was seeking to get an appropriation for the benefit of his constituents and spoke in the eloquent way he could, of our people and of the necessities for the appropriation. Senator Howe replied in opposition and made some reflections upon this state and upon its people. Senator Ingalls in response used a sarcasm and vitriolic words of which we all know him to have been master, and left the Badger state literally wrecked and in confusion. Senator Howe in response said that he had little personal acquaintance with Kansas, as his experience was confined to incidents that occurred during the war. That he was a Colonel of a Wisconsin Regiment on Sherman's march to Atlanta. That one day while riding along the road, he observed an old man walking backward and forward wringing his hands, who seemed to be in great distress, upon the veranda of a fine mansion some little distance from the

road on a plantation. He rode up to the house and said to the old man, "What is the matter?" The old man in great grief and with tears in his eyes, said that the soldiers who had passed had ransacked his house and taken all of his provisions, and not content with that, had even carried off his daughter's side saddle. "But," he said, "there is one thing they cannot steal.'' "What is that," asked Colonel Howe. "Why," he said, as he lifted his hand toward the sky and looked up, "it is my hope in heaven." Senator Howe replied, "You must not be too dead sure of that, for the 7th Kansas has not passed yet."

The people of the state should do honor to its early pioneers and a great part of it depends upon the lawyers. If we look over this fair state we will find the enduring monuments of our early pioneers. "These monuments consist in the happy homes of prosperous freeman; these churches; these schools; the care for the unfortunate and the homeless; these institutions of education, religion and humanity; these fine streets and fine shade trees; these railroads. But greater by far the strong energies they created by which the resources of the future are to be developed.

"These are the monuments of our early pioneers. Their memorial is all over this state. Our smallest streams, our greatest rivers roll mingling with their fame forever."

Nature has been prodigal to this fair state of ours. None has sunnier skies, nor fairer landscapes. The breath we breathe on our broad prairies, gives health and vigor, and with the energies given us by our early pioneers, may we, under God, make this as our fathers desired, a land good to live in, and a blessing to ourselves and our posterity.

ELECTION REFORMS: THE TREND

TOWARD DEMOCRACY.

J. C. RUPPENTHAL, RUSsell, kan.

Broadly speaking, election is simply choice. In a narrower sense, the term is limited to the choice of persons for political offices, or for nomination to such offices, by the people, or by a somewhat numerous body as distinguished from appointment by a single person; or the determination of other questions submitted by law to popular vote.1

This paper seeks to present the general features of American laws in the nature of election reform, in the narrower sense, with especial reference to the decisions of the highest courts thereon.

When the thirteen original American colonies revolted against the mother country, their government was essentially that which had been evolved in a thousand years of struggle and conflict in England. But in details, there was as wide divergence as could well be imagined among people of practically common origin, race, religion and language. With the more permanent union under the federal constitution came an impulse to conform much governmental procedure to a common standard. Especially was this true in the matter of elections. After 130 years of trial and change, nearly all of the states vote on the same day,

(1) See 10 Amer. & Eng. Encyc. Law, p. 562.

(2) The people have no inherent power to hold elections. 10 A. & E. Enc. Law, p. 563; State v. Robinson, 1 Kansas 17; Jones v. State, 1 Kan. 273; State v. Thoman, 10 Kan. 191; Matthews v. Shawnee Co., 34 Kansas 606.