The cash bonus asked—not asked but demanded in formal resolutions—by various of the associations of the American Legion throughout the country, and which has given the present Congress and the President more concern than almost any domestic subject, has not struck a responsive chord in the popular ear except from the soldiers—a minority of them, as we believe—who want it. Every business man knows it is not the time to pension well soldiers of the late war further than the States are doing it. We have always doubted that the best officers and soldiers of the country were behind the movement. It is to belittle their patriotism to believe that they desire to foist billions of taxes, direct or indirect, upon their country at the present moment.
When Senator Edge told an assembly at Atlantic City recently that the Senate of the United States, of which he is a member, failed alarmingly in performing its proper duties in a speedy and efficient manner, he only stated what public opinion has long held. The mere fact, to which he did not allude however, that a few men can talk any good project before that body to death, the Senate rules permitting unlimited debate, has served again and again to prove the truth of his statements. The House of Representatives, with its too-many members, is far more reflective of public sentiment than the Senate, and actually does its work more expeditiously when a majority of members desire quick action. A reform in the Senate is of such importance that too much public attention to its improper methods of carrying on public business cannot be given. The press of the country should be a unit in demanding a change in methods and results. The New York Times thinks the trouble is largely due to the fact that there is a dearth of strong men in the Senate; that there is no great inducement for a strong man to go to the Senate as a new member, because he is practically frozen out of any good committee assignment for a long period of time. It says of a new member:
What will happen to him when he takes his seat in the Senate? He will get only insignificant committee appointments. He will be expected to be silent for at least six months. If he undertakes, as a new Senator, to impress upon the Senate any positive convictions of his own, he will be hazed like a college freshman in the effort to teach him his place. If there is in the Senate a career open to talent, it is open only after long waiting. In short, the Senate that now professes an anxiety for the accession of strong men itself puts formidable obstacles in the way of a strong man. Its rules, as Senator Wadsworth has just been lamenting, make it almost impossible to transact business. Its time is mostly taken up by querulous and ineffective members. Its committees are manned by the rule of seniority, which too often spells senility. Indeed, about the only way in which the Senate as it is at present can be said to be a nursery of political strength is in accordance with the maxim, Suffer and be strong. A Senator who can survive for a few years the suffering, mental and moral, which he has to undergo in the Senate, may emerge into power and influence. But upon the strong man just arrived the Senate always puts a damper.
Lots of truth in this. Nevertheless, present Senate rules combined with too much politics and too little statesmanship and business activity are responsible for a deterioration of the public esteem for our highest governing body.
Dean Stone of the Columbia University Law School of New York City in a report to the President of that Institution made recently sounds a proper warning as to the quality and numbers of young men crowding into the Bars of many of the States. Among other things he said:
It may well be doubted whether there is any profession which makes greater demands than the law on the capacity of its members for sustained intellectual efforts, their powers of discrimination and their ability to master detail. Yet, as I have often had occasion to point out in these reports, increasing numbers of men of mediocre ability and inadequate preliminary education are being attracted to the law by the ever-increasing facilities for law study. What, under the conditions of law study and admission to the Bar of a generation ago, was a task of magnitude testing the patience, stability, character and intellectual power of the prospective lawyer to the utmost may now be performed with relative ease. This is partly attributable to the multiplication of opportunities for law and study nicely adapted to the peculiar type of Bar examination prevailing in most of our States, and partly because Law Schools and Bar examinations too often place the interests of the individual law student and sometimes their own interests ahead of the interests of the profession. It is the duty of Law Schools to dissuade the man of ordinary ability and meagre education from beginning law study, and, if he will not be dissuaded, to apply to him standards of proficiency and attainment worthy of the profession to whose membership he aspires.