We believe that the death penalty is not necessary in the present state of society among civilized peoples. The sacrifice of life is illegitimate if the sacrifice of liberty is sufficient for the protection and development of society. Punishment by the indeterminate sentence answers all requirements for the protection of society. The death penalty has been abolished for political crimes, and is gradually ceasing in the more enlightened communities. The treatment of criminals affords an infallible test of the civilization of a people.

Laws are made for the conduct of mankind, some regulating and some prohibiting. The better and sounder the laws the higher the type of civilization, and the better the condition of the governed. Unsatisfied hunger does not produce crime. The gaunt spectre of all ages frowns upon angels and devils alike. Lack of work produces conditions which foster the worst in man. "If a man is out of work and starving what will he do?" was asked of President Taft in Cooper Union. His reply was, "God knows." "Take if you can find," is the answer of instinct. Our conception of the significance of facts may be all wrong, yet the facts remain just the same.

Children's shoes are not made because children need shoes, but because of the shoemaker's profits. If it were not that profits must come first and goods afterward, humanity would never lack for the necessaries of life. Given raw material at cost of production, labor would soon produce shoes or clothing while Dame Nature would bring forth the food products. Have you ever known a dark day of depression that would not be made instantly bright if the wage workers had been permitted to return to work? If the closed factories had been permitted to re-open, producing food and clothing for the hungry and half-clad? Why is this so? Because the owners see no profits in sight. The touch of labor will start the dead machinery. In turn will come life-saving goods to a suffering people. Every door is barred, every wheel is still, because the gain hoped for in profits is not in sight. Over production is a baldheaded lie. No nation, no country has ever been guilty of it. Over production so called, is under consumption. We simply cannot buy back the things we make. Wages are too small. The things pile up.

Is there any remedy? Yes. Let the law making power which raises and lowers the tariff, which curbs exportations, which regulate transportations, become the manufacturers of the necessities of life. Give the people a chance to work whether there are profits or not, make and sell goods at cost. The answer is that the capitalistic classes, all along held sacred, would suffer. But how would capital, a dead and not a living thing suffer? Would the gold in vaults experience any change? No. The capitalistic system is not as old as the steam engine or electricity. We have not improved the system of cash but we have improved the great inventions which make for the progress of man.

Business depressions, produced by the capitalistic system, produce crime of all kinds, create violators of the law of the land. Equal laws, tending to produce equality of both men and money, will be for the greater betterment of all. The saner the laws the more certain their observances.

An Anomaly in Law

EDITOR'S NOTE.-Written by a man so largely and favorably known as is its author, the following article will be read with more than ordinary interest, particularly by the members of the California bar. Hon. John Currey, now about 90 years of age, is in the full vigor of life, and his splendid metal attainments are as great as in the days when he adorned the bench as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California. He was first appointed a member of the California Supreme Court in 1865, and served with Hon. S. W. Sanderson, then Chief Justice, Hon. Lorenzo Sawyer, afterwards United States Circuit Judge, Hon. Augustus L. Rhodes, still living, and Hon. Oscar L. Shafter. That court was a great, strong one and made law in the days when many difficult problems arose and the task of giving the State a system of jurisprudence called for the highest standard of intelligence and judicial acumen. How ably they succeeded in this is best judged by the record of that court whose decisions soon placed it among the great tribunals of our country.

In 1867, Judge Currey was appointed Chief Justice and served in that capacity for about ten years, when he resumed the practice of his profession, taking his place at the bar with such men of the days as Stephen J. Field, afterwards Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and Hall McAllister, whose fame is an integral part of the history of the bar of California. He was called in as chief counsel for one side or the other in all the heavy litigation of the day, and his was the master mind that conducted the cases which involved the law respecting the Spanish land grants, a proper determination of which meant so much to the people of the State and the future of California.

For years now he has been in retirement, yet never lessening his interest in the law as a science and its proper administration. To this end he has followed the courts, particularly those of his own beloved State, in their decisions, and to his mind, ripened by years of study and experience, both as a lawyer and a jurist, in the case of which he writes, justice has suffered a miscarriage, the State has committed a great wrong. Of the individual he makes no comment, no doubt taking the view that personality is merged in the great mass and body of the whole people, and a wrong against one is a wrong against them all in its application.

His wealth and independent position, place him above every influence and what follows is subscribed to by him without any purpose other than to give expression to a state of mind that is the product of careful thought and much deliberation. No claim is made that the article is intended as an exposition of the law or a careful review of the whole case. Having studied the whole record and proceedings, Judge Currey makes the salient point that justice has been denied the defendant. That is enough to entitle it to publication.

By an unfortunate combination of untoward circumstances, happenings and accidents, the defendant Abraham Ruef, is now in prison, deprived of his liberty without due process of law. That he is so deprived of his liberty, I shall endeavor to show.

He was subject to trial, charged with having bribed a public officer at the City and County of San Francisco, in the State of California. For several years before he was indicted for the crime alleged against him, he was known as the Political Boss of San Francisco, and at the time of the finding of the indictment against him, had become very unpopular. His trial, from beginning to end, consumed, in time, about four months. No person of intelligence and just judgment acquainted with the facts and attendant circumstances of his trial can believe that it was fair and impartial. In respect to questions which arose during the trial, the Judge presiding was against him generally and made a great number of rulings of a prejudicial and erroneous character. In summing up the case to the jury, the counsel for the prosecution was permitted by the court, a wide and free indulgence in a denunciation of the defendant.

Following the charge of the Judge to the jury, the defendant was found guilty and following this, he was sentenced to serve the term of fourteen years in the State Prison.

As I understand the law of evidence, long settled in England and America, I believe that much of the testimony presented on the trial of the defendant was illegal, incompetent, and irrelevant, and that the little that was admissable did not prove him guilty of having bribed John J. Fury, as charged in the indictment.

In due time the defendant appealed from the judgment of the trial court to the District Court of Appeals of the First District. A transcript of the record of the proceedings of the trial was presented on the defendant's behalf and settled and agreed to as correct, and as such, submitted to the Appellate Court. This record, be it remembered, imported absolute verity. The case was elaborately presented and argued before the Court.

In due time the judgment of the trial court was affirmed by the District Court of Appeals. This judgment for the grounds and reasons on which it is based must be read in order to understand and comprehend it.

An application was made on behalf of the defendant for a rehearing which was denied on the 23d of December, 1910, when the judgment of affirmance became final in that Court.

This affirmance appears to have been a surprise and disappointment to the legal profession acquainted with the facts and circumstances of the trial of the defendant.

In the opinion of our Chief Justice, delivered at the time, the order hereinafter mentioned was vacated and annulled. The judgment of the Court of Appeals became final on the 23d of December, 1910, when the Supreme Court of the State became vested with the power to advance the case as upon appeal, to a hearing in the Supreme Court.

This power seems to have been designated and devised to provide on the one hand, for meritorious appeals to the Supreme Court, and on the other, for the protection of the Court against vexatious, dilatory and frivolous appeals.

It appears, from the statement of the case of the defendant, by the Chief Justice, that on the 3d of January, 1911, there was submitted to the Court on his behalf, a petition for the allowance of a hearing by this Court of last resort as upon appeal. This petition which I have seen, was graciously received and accepted by the Court. In it were set forth the grounds and reasons for the appeal.

The defendant's appeal was denied on the 23d of November, 1910, when the judgment became final in form and remained in abeyance until the 23d of December following, when it became final, subject, however, to the power vested in the Supreme Court to advance the defendant's case to a hearing and determination by the Supreme Court as upon appeal, as provided by the Constitution.

On the 3d day of January, 1911, the defendant, whose attitude until then had been passive, by the gracious leave of the Court, submitted a petition which was accepted, praying to be allowed a hearing as upon an appeal for the reversal of the judgment of the Court below, in which petition he set forth in full, the grounds and reason for a rehearing of his case. By this petition he became an affirmative actor.

This petition, together with its embodied statement of the grounds and causes of complaint, constitute a pleading, accepted by the Court in aid of its deliberations in the exercise of its power imposed and conferred by the Constitution. It was well and appropriately adapted as a proceeding designed