It is not merely that there are no solicitors, as such, in the United States, for it might well be that the general practising lawyers who fill their places, so far as their places have to be filled, might be just as serious an incubus on business as solicitordom is on the business of London to-day. Names are immaterial. The essential fact is that the spirit and the conditions which make solicitors a necessity in England do not exist in America. I do not propose to go into any comparison in the differences in legal procedure in the two countries; not being a lawyer, I should undoubtedly make blunders if I did. What is important is that a man who is accustomed to walking alone does not think of turning to his legal adviser at every step. Great corporations and large business concerns have of course their counsel, their attorneys, and even their "general solicitors." But the ordinary American engaged in trade or business in a small or moderate way gets along from year's end to year's end, perhaps for his lifetime, without legal services. I am speaking only on conjecture when I say that, taking the country as a whole, outside of the large corporations or among rich men, over ninety per cent. of the legal documents—leases, agreements, contracts, articles of partnership, articles of incorporation, bills of sale, and deeds of transfer—are executed by the individuals concerned without reference to a lawyer. Probably not less than three fourths of the actual transactions in the purchase of land, houses, businesses, or other property are similarly concluded without assistance. "What do we need of a lawyer?" one man will ask the other and the other will immediately agree that they need one not at all.
Of course troubles often arise which would have been prevented had the documents been drawn up by a competent hand. The constitutional reluctance to go to a lawyer is sometimes carried to lengths that are absurd. But I do not believe that the amount of litigation which arises from that cause is in any way comparable to that which is avoided by the mere fact that legal aid is outside the mental horizon. The men who conduct most of the affairs of life directly without legal help are most likely to adjust differences when they arise in the same way. That is a matter of opinion, however, based only on reasonable analogy, which I can advance no figures to support; but what is not matter of opinion, but matter of certainty, is, first, that the general gain in the rapidity of business movement is incalculable, and, second, that business as a whole is relieved of the vast burden of solicitors' charges.
The American, accustomed to the ways of his own people, on becoming engaged in business in London is astounded, first, at the disposition of the Englishman to turn for legal guidance in almost every step he takes, second, at the stupendous sums of money which are paid for services which in his opinion are entirely superfluous, and, finally, at the terrible loss of time incurred in the conclusion of any transaction by the waiting for the drafting and redrafting and amending and engrossing and recording of interminable documents which are a bewilderment and an annoyance to him.
The Englishman often says that American business methods are slip-shod; and possibly that is the right word. But Englishmen should not for a moment deceive themselves into thinking that the American envies the Englishman the superior niceties of his ways or would think himself or his condition likely to be improved by an exchange. An example of difference in the practice of the two countries which has so often been used as to be fairly hackneyed (and therefore perhaps stands the better chance of carrying conviction than a more original, if better, illustration) is drawn from the theory which governs the building of locomotive engines in the two countries.
The American usually builds his engine to do a certain specified service and to last a reasonable length of time. During that time he proposes to get all the work out of it that he can—to wear it out in fact—feeling well assured that, when that time expires, either the character of the service to be performed will have altered or such improvements will have been introduced into the science of locomotive construction as will make it cheaper to replace the old engine with one of later build. The Englishman commonly builds his engines as if they were to last for all time. There are many engines working on English railways now, the American contemporaries of which were scrapped twenty years ago. The Englishman takes pride in their antiquity, as showing the excellence of the workmanship which was put into them. The American thinks it would have been incomparably better to have thrown the old things away long ago and replaced them with others of recent building which would be more efficient.
The same principle runs through most things in American life, where they rarely build for posterity, preferring to adapt the article to the work it has to perform, expecting to supersede it when the time comes with something better. If a thing suffices, it suffices; whether it be a locomotive or a contract. "What is the use," the American asks, "when you can come to an agreement with a fellow in ten minutes and draw up your contract with him that afternoon,—what is the use of calling in your solicitors to negotiate and then paying them heavily to keep you waiting for weeks while they draft documents? We shall have had the contract running a month and be making money out of it before the lawyers would get through talking."
Out of this divergence in point of view and practice have of course grown other differences. One thing is that the American courts have necessarily come to adopt more liberal views in the interpretation of contracts than the English; they are to a greater extent inclined to look more to the intent than to the letter and to attach more weight to verbal evidence in eliciting what the intent was. No stamping of documents being necessary in America, the documents calling themselves contracts, and which are upheld as such, which appear in American courts are frequently of a remarkable description; but I have a suspicion that on the whole the American, in this particular, comes as near to getting justice on the average as does the Englishman.
And the point is that I believe it to be inevitable that the habit of doing without lawyers in the daily conduct of business, the habit of relying on oneself and dealing with another man direct, must in the long run breed a higher standard of individual business integrity. Englishmen, relying always on their solicitors' advice, are too tempted to consider that so long as they are on the right side of the law they are honest. It is a shifting of the responsibility to the chaperon; whereas, if alone, you would be compelled to act on your honour.
What I think and hope is the last word that I have to say on this rather difficult subject has to do with the matter already mentioned, namely the absence of the necessity of stamping documents in America. Englishmen will remember that the Americans always have evinced a dislike of stamps and stamp duties and acts relating thereto. Of late years the necessity of meeting the expenses of the Spanish war did for a while compel the raising of additional internal revenue by means of documentary and other stamps. The people submitted to it, but they hated it; and hated it afresh as often as they drew or saw a cheque with the two-cent stamp upon it. The act was repealed as speedily as possible and the stamping of papers has for six years now been unknown.
I think—and I am not now stating any acknowledged fact, but only appealing to the reader's common-sense—that it is again inevitable that where a superior sanctity attaches to stamped paper a people must in the long run come to think too lightly of that which is unstamped. I do not say that the individual Englishman has as yet come to think too lightly of his word or bond because it is informal, but I do think there is danger of it. The words "Can we hold him?" or (what is infinitely worse) "Can he hold us?" spring somewhat readily to the lips of the business man of this generation in England.