Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 23.pdf/551

 Judges as Law Makers

513

it easier to induce the man in question to run when he knows that his running

urchins called newspapers will hoot and make faces at you and draw on the

can amount only to a protest against

walls nonsensical pictures intended to wound your feelings and make you

abuses and scandals or a help to other candidates than when there seems to be some fair show for his own election. We may ask why do really ﬁrst-class men, as a rule, shun public employment in its higher grades and too often oblige their state or nation to be content with second-class, if, indeed, even these can be secured and our public trusts are not abandoned to the clearly unﬁt?

The

ridiculous, and I shall tolerate and even applaud their antics. Finally, if you shall stay with me far longer than do most of my workmen and, by reason of this long and faithful service, can no longer work hard or ﬁnd work readily, when I have done with you I will show

you the door with no mark of gratitude for the past and no provision against

answer is suﬁ‘iciently obvious. Those men best ﬁtted for such work will not do

want for the future." Is it likely that a

it, or doit long, because the conditions of

whose acts squared

their work do not .allow them to work happily and with self-respect. The American people, as a would-be employer of labor, approaches a skilled

would get such a workman? And, if it isn't, why should one of our states or

workman of this class, a man assured at

private employer who talked thus and with his words

the nation hope to do better?

There are two classes of our public servants who are treated, in the main,

all times of steady work at good wages, and says to him, speaking by its acts: "Come and work for me; if you come I shall probably take away your job at just about the time you have learned to take interest in it and to do it to your own satisfaction. Meantime I shall let

as all servants must be treated by a

others of my workmen, whose help is indispensable to your work, constantly

sult of this treatment, with lamentable but comparatively rare exceptions, we do ﬁnd him a man of honor. We safe guard our soldiers and sailors against an old age of misery, and men of the

hinder it and embarrass you by all sorts of gratuitous annoyances, not necessarily because they have any quarrel with you

but often as incidents to squabbles among themselves or to attain ends of their own with which you have no con_ cern. I shall also permit, indeed I shall encourage, some of your fellow-workmen

master who would be well served. I mean our judges and the oﬁ‘icers of our Army and Navy. We behave to a judge, we behave to a military or a naval officer

as if we expected to ﬁnd him a man of honor, and, in no small measure as a re

highest character and capacity willingly

relinquish the hope of wealth and the independence of civil life to thus serve us. Although, as yet, a like provision for our judges is scandalously far from

and outsiders as well, to frequently and publicly censure you and your work,

universal, and although their salaries

and often to do this not only harshly

ﬁnd men worthy of the bench to give up for it all the great possibilities of our

and uncharitably, but ignorantly and in bad faith, without knowing what you

have really done and without wishing or trying to know this. Often, more over, while you are at your work-bench,

a crowd of silly and badly behaved

amount hardly to a living wage, we yet

bar. Our courts and our Army and Navy are indeed far from perfect;

neither is our treatment of those who preside in the former or who command the latter in all respects just to them or