Page:The Wisconsin idea (IA cu31924032449252).pdf/79

 "'I sat half up on my elbow.

"'"And if I go to court with every Tammany chief of the district—still a slow eye," I remarked.

"'The lawyer jumped, and his face got queer. He took the addresses I gave him, and went to see my friends. He came back the next day, and grinned kind of sheepish, and offered a thousand. I signed.'

"Talk with hundreds of men on the docks, and you will find that the Scotchman's opinion, rightly or wrongly, is the opinion of all. But few are as shrewd as he. Nine out of ten get nothing at all, or else settle at once for some beggarly sum. And so, having grown hopeless of this 'just eye,' they long ago started a scheme of their own."

Good soil for the anarchist and the firebrand, is it not, Mr. Reader?

Legal aid bureaus have been established in cities, but on the whole comparatively feeble attempts have been made in Wisconsin or any other place to carry out any definite plan to right some of these wrongs. Does it show that we need some other sort of machinery to-day to meet economic conditions? Does it show a breakdown of common justice? Does it show that we should have some coöperation on the part of the judges in clearing up the procedure and the chicanery which has surrounded law? Is it not a serious matter that these crude devices above pictured have had to be used because justice could not be obtained and that, because wealth and strength did have in fact such a place in