advanced years. The next in age on the before the court in 1909, but that they were bench is Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who regarded as so important that a full bench will be seventy in a few weeks, but whose was desired, and a rehearing was ordered mind is as fresh and active as it ever was, and after Justice Brewer's death. A recent dewho seems to have inherited from his father cision by the United States Circuit Court those gifts of mental elasticity and youth at Philadelphia, in the Government's case that are not affected by the passing years. against the anthracite-carrying roads, will Before this tribunal as thus reconstituted, also be appealed by the Department of Juswith a man of superb talents for Chief Justice tice to the Supreme Court. The Governand four new members of experience and ment's object was to break up the so-called power, a number of great cases are to be tried in the early future, and the business methods of this country must for a long time be affected by the results of these appeals to our court of last resort. anthracite monopoly. The Philadelphia decision sustains only a part of the Government's case. The Philadelphia judges have granted an injunction against the Temple Iron Company, which is the organization through which the anthracite roads have We are to have in the immediate regulated the output and prices of coal. It future a hearing of the argu- is thought by Government officials that the ments in the appealed Standard National Packing Company, which bears a Oil and Tobacco cases. It will be remem- like relation to the great cattle-buying and bered that these great suits had been argued packing-houses of Chicago and the West, Great Cases to be Decided will be restrained in a similar fashion. The important to have them so interpreted that Government is about to proceed against the the managers of industrial and transportacombination of electrical companies that is said to control the greater part of the business of providing electrical machinery and appliances. This situation is said to turn upon the control of certain patents. Law and its Business tion companies may know of a certainty whether or not they are lawbreakers. Business corporations of national scope ought to be under national regulation. In so far as they are doing business properly they ought to be protected and encouraged. It will be a great relief to have pending cases brought to a conclusion, 'and the expected prosecutions pushed rapidly and sent up to the highest court for decision. It is probable that Chief Justice White and his learned associates can render the country no better service than to focus their energies, in so far as possible, upon these great business cases. They must lay down guiding principles for the lower courts, and rules of conduct for the officers and legal counselors of our railway and industrial corporations. Their findings will be awaited with intense interest. Thus we are to witness a greater Relation to range of activity in the enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust law than at any previous time. And we are to have those sweeping and conclusive interpretations of this law that the courts have not hitherto had the opportunity to give us. President Taft, in his message to Congress, takes the ground that it will be better to have these pending cases prosecuted, and the law interpreted, before trying to amend the Sherman law in any way. He still holds to the desirability of a federal corporation act, but expects no immediate steps in that direction. There is no other commercial nation The reorganizing of the Interwhose great business enterprises are under state Commerce Commission is of the ban of the law, or in the throes of prosemore immediate interest to our cution or of hostile investigation at the hands business world than the creation of the new of the Government. Whether our existing Court of Commerce and the naming of its five laws are wise or unwise, therefore, it is very judges. Chairman Knapp, who has served The Men Who for nearly twenty years as a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission, has been made a member of the new Commerce Court, and Mr. Cockrell, of Missouri, retires by rea Copyright by Clinedinst, Washington HON. MARTIN A. KNAPP (Presiding Judge of the Court of Commerce) son of age (he is in his seventy-seventh year). The two vacancies in the Commission have been filled by the selection of Prof. B. H. Meyer, of the University of Wisconsin, and Mr. C. C. McChord, of Kentucky. Professor Meyer had recently been made a member of the special commission, headed by President Hadley of Yale, on the regulation of railroad stock and bond issues. Mr. LaFollette's governorship of Wisconsin led to the creation. of an extraordinarily capable State commission for railway regulation, and Professor Meyer, as a member of that commission and a writer on railway economics, is already a man of wide reputation. Mr. McChord has served for some years on the Kentucky railway commission. These new members will be qualified to join intelligently in the great pending work of the Interstate Commerce Commission, inasmuch as they have doubtless followed closely the hearings on the question of increasing railway rates. The It remains to be seen whether or Commercial not the creation of a special fedCourt eral court for commerce cases is a valuable innovation. Martin A. Knapp, of New York, becomes the presiding judge. John Emmett Carland, a federal district. judge of South Dakota, and Robert Woodrow Archbald, a federal district judge of Pennsylvania, are appointed to this new court, and the other two members of it are William H. Hunt and Julian William Mack. Mr. Hunt, before he became Secretary (afterwards Governor) of Porto Rico, had filled political and President judiciary offices in Montana. Mr. Lehmann as Photograph by Strauss HON. F. W. LEHMANN, OF ST. LOUIS Mr. Brandeis The wide and active discussion last month of the Interstate Commerce Commission's hearings on Not the least interesting of Mr. Lawyer for the Taft's appointments last month Government was that of the Hon. Frederick W. Lehmann, of St. Louis, as Solicitor-General of the United States. Mr. Lehmann is this year president of the American Bar Association, and his professional reputation is so high that if Mr. Taft had appointed him to the Supreme bench there would have been general approval from the lawyers of the country. Mr. Taft was once Solicitor-General himself, and he regards the office as of immense importance, especially at this time when great cases are to be argued before the the question of increased freight rates cenSupreme Court. Mr. Bowers had brought a tered on the argument of Mr. Louis J. Brangreat reputation from Chicago, and it was deis, counsel for the shippers, that the railsupposed that Mr. Taft might sometime roads could get the additional income they elevate him to the Supreme bench. His death need by the simple method of introducing was a serious loss, and Mr. Taft fills the va- modern scientific methods of management. cancy by the appointment of another lawyer In the past decade a new profession has been of the Mississippi Valley of equally high created on this theory that scientific study of standing. Mr. Hoyt, who had been Solicitor- the smallest details and of the entire operaGeneral in the Roosevelt administration, was tions of a factory or other business concern chosen by Secretary Knox as the Counselor can show the way to great economies in cost, of the State Department, and his death a few prevent waste and increase output. There weeks ago marks another vacancy in the are now eminent consulting engineers who are group of talented lawyers who have been giv- engaged by industrial heads to study their ing the Government their devoted service. establishments from top to bottom with a It is the business of the Solicitor-General to view to finding by scientific study the methargue the Government's cases before the ods of working, accounting and handling Supreme Court, the Attorney-General sel- labor which will improve on the old tradidom having the time to appear in court in tional habits. Some extraordinary results view of his cabinet duties and varied responsi- have been attained. One frequently cited is bilities. President Taft, in securing Mr. in the trade of bricklaying, where it is said. Lehmann, has brought to the Government's that by scientifically analyzing and simplifyaid, in the handling of the great cases about to ing the movements made by the bricklayer, be tried in the near future, as able a lawyer and efficiency, as measured by the output of a as brilliant an orator as his profession affords. man in a given time, was increased 200 per It means, in part, that the administration is cent. Mr. Brandeis, to support his widely quite in earnest about law-enforcement. quoted statement that the railroads could Photograph by Harris & Ewing MR. LOUIS BRANDEIS, REPRESENTATIVE OF THE SHIPPERS IN THE RATE HEARING save $1,000,000 a day through scientific improvements in industrial practice, put a number of the foremost of these professional "business economizers" on the witness stand. It was shown that certain railroads, for instance the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, had already gone far into these modern methods of industrial economy with good results. Some of the points brought out by Mr. Brandeis in the testimony given before the Interstate Commerce Commission are clearly summarized in the article by Mr. Benjamin Baker which we publish on page 80 of this number. Our own understanding of the attitude of organized labor on the subject of the bonus system does not wholly coincide with Mr. Baker's, as will appear. is unusually large opportunity to prevent waste. But, in the first place, the adoption of the modern scientific methods of management is apt to amount, in the end, to a revolution in the details of organization, and such a revolution takes a long time to accomplish, if it is to have a helpful result. Some mistakes are always made at first, and it takes months, or, in such vast and complex organizations as a great railroad, it may take years, to get the thing done and in good running order. Now the problem before the railroads of showing such net income as will enable them to do their necessary financing is felt to be immediate. Labor Union Opposition A second difficulty in the way of using the so-called modern scientific methods of reorganizing railway operation lies in the attitude of organized labor. Two essential factors in the scientific reorganization of a shop or other industrial plant are standardization, involving high specializing of processes, and some sort of bonus system to stimulate workers to make the best use of the new method. Organized labor is flatly against specialization, and apparently not agreed on the bonus system. Mr. John Mitchell discussed the matter very frankly in relation to the arguments of Mr. Brandeis. Specialization, Mr. Mitchell claimed, tends to monotony in the worker's life and brain atrophy. It is not denied that costs can often be reduced and output increased by limiting a given worker's attention to a most restricted fraction of the |