Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 23.pdf/275

 247

Reviews of Books Why do you still my table grace(?)

Long time since you were brought? My wonted luck! Of course the case Was “settled out of Court.” Are you the last of all the band, Survivor of your race? I almost hate you, yes, I loathe

Your too familiar face. Perth, Western Australia.

Reviews of Books DEAN BIGELOW’S "A FALSE EQUATION” A False Equation: The Problem of the Great Trust. By Melville M. Blgelow, Dean of the Bos ton University School of Law. Little, Brown 8:

Co., Boston. ($1.50.)

HE author takes as his starting point the ﬁduciary responsibility of the State, which is the doctrine

to the extent to which the State has failed to restrain the Railways in their attempted exercise of autocratic power, and asserts that the people’s battle will be but partially won so long as the Railways remain the judges of what is a fair return on their valuation. In the

second

place,

he

discusses

the

tendencies of modern society that con stitute a menace to authority, instancing

endorsed by the leading constitutional lawyers of the day, shows how far it the disintegration of the family as has fallen short of this ideal and lays facilitated by modern divorce laws, down the principle that the great the failure of the criminal courts to problem can only be worked out by render the punishment of crime swift sound educational methods.

Chapter I is devoted to the weakness of the State. The author discusses this phase of the subject under two heads. He ﬁrst speaks of the long train of evils consequent upon the undue

ascendancy

of

Privilege,

and

shows how, in handing over to Monopoly what is inherently the people’s heritage, the State, has signally failed to control the opposing forces thereby engendered, while the consumer is too often subjected to a veritable bondage. Witness the coal famine in 1902 and 1903, and the very recent extortionate advances in

the price of milk.

The author refers

and certain, the almost interminable delays in civil procedure, and the in ﬂuence of a sensational press. In a word, he sees as the counterpart of the entrenchment of Privilege, a tendency

toward a general relaxation of civic ideals ending in a contempt for law. After

showing

the

weakness,

the

author proceeds in Chapter II to point out the remedy.

The task he ﬁnds no

easy one, with the public disinclined to participation in public affairs and with the federal Constitution imposing limita tions on the development of the powers needed to meet the issues raised by modern conditions. He ﬁnds the third