ADDRESS OF R. G. H. KEAN, President of the Association. Gentlemen of the Virginia State Bar Association: I proceed at once to discharge my present duty under the eleventh article of our Constitution. The work of such an association was admirably outlined in the circular, issued two years ago, which led to the formation of this body, as follows: 1. In promoting the dignity and usefulness of the Bar by elevating the standard of legal requirement and legal ethics. 2. In maintaining the honor of the profession by purging it of unworthy members. 3. In guarding the avenues to the profession by requiring higher and better qualification before admission to practice. 4. In laboring to secure for the Bench the best professional talent in the State by providing better compensation, or otherwise. 5. In watching and influencing legislation, and preventing the enactment of ill-considered laws. 6. In combining the voice and influence of the Bar in favor of these objects, or any other looking to its advantage, and the good of the State. To this summary may be added, the promotion, by personal intercourse, contact and association, of mutual regard and confidence, and of that liberality of mind which such intercourse tends to produce. I In all of these objects, except two, the aid or co-operation of the State Legislature was, and is, needful; to several of them essential. have observed during the past winter with equal mortification and disappointment, that of the various matters brought to the attention of our Legislature, in pursuance of the resolutions of this body at its last annual meeting, but one (the charter of the Association) received approval, and most of them failed to meet with even decently respectful consideration. The fate of several of the matters specially directed by the Association to be presented to the General Assembly will be presented in the reports of your standing committees. Why the Legislature of the State should be unwilling even to consider subjects of public concern merely because they are submitted by a body of citizens of good character, excellent intelligence, and fair knowledge of affairs, who, being lawyers, may be presumed to be moderately well versed in the subjects which concern the administration of the law and its bearings on society, is a question worth considering. It is a painful fact that the Legislature seems not only not in sympathy with us, but almost hostile; and that some of the most scornful flings come from members of the Bar. This experience, I learn, is not pecuculiar to us in Virginia. An eminent gentleman of the profession in an adjoining State, a member of their Court of Appeals,* (who, alas, while this address was only partly written, received the summons, which none can gainsay or resist, to come up higher), who was warmly interested in their State Bar Association, informed me a year ago that the result of six or seven years of experience had demonstrated that the Bar Association of his State, contrary to expectations previously entertained, has had no perceptible influence on the course of legislation; that the members of the Legislature, so far from lending a ready ear to the recommendations of that body, have shown a distinct indisposition to entertain them favorably. This, I repeat, is discouraging. The causes are obscure. Yet the history of society shows that abuses are always conservative; that reformers have rarely had the ear of the public, or of the law-making body, at first; that all reforms, in short, have been the fruit of constant, persistent, and laborious pertinacity, amounting to propagandism. It may be that we may prove less immediately useful to the general public than we hoped to be. Not the less, however, let us continue to lift up our voices in pointing out abuses, in demanding reforms, in declaring sound principles. Every member who goes from one of our meetings with his interest and attention aroused and stimulated, and his mind convinced, will be a new centre of enlightenment in society. And after a time, though it be many days hence, some fruit will grow from the seed we plant. *Hon. William C. Folkes, of the Supreme Court of Tennessee. In this faith I have chosen for the special topic on which to submit some reflections, THE TENDENCY TO ABUSE OF CORPORATE FRANCHISES. The employment of corporations in recent years has developed into vast importance. In the social struggle of the present, the most marked feature is the tendency to combination, as contrasted with individualism. This tendency finds expression in multiform ways, of which Trade Unions, Labor Unions, Trusts, Common Schools, the Single-Tax Movement, Consolidations, Corporations, and Mr. Bellamy's hobby, Nationalization, are all examples. Year by year, almost day by day, in the rush of events, the bustle and struggle of the world, the individual man counts for less and less-combinations in some form or other, for more and more. What the ultimate effect of this may be on human society is no mean problem. It is one which belongs less to our profession than to the professors of the science of sociology. It seems probable that one effect is, or will be, to dwarf, more or less, the man; to depress his spontaneity and independence; gradually to mould the units of society into a shape taken from a common pattern. The work of the world is falling into machine work. This remark is especially true of the common school system. I am not an enemy of public free schools, in the abstract, or in the concrete, if it be possible to have a system which can be worked upon philosophical principles of pedagogy. So far as my observation of them goes, as they exist here in Virginia, and I believe elsewhere, their work is nearly all on the machine pattern, the outcome of which is, at least in tendency, to produce a nation of mediocrities of a low grade. Corporations form a conspicuous expression of this tendency to combination. Ancient as the text-writers show us that they are, it is only as a part of the recent movement of the human mind that their numbers, their scope, their magnitude, and their diversity, and the amazing ingenuity and ability with which they are misused, have grown into proportions so vast as to render them a social factor of immense importance, and no little danger. This, in part, was clearly and strongly pointed out by Mr. Justice Miller, of the Supreme Court of the United States, twenty years ago, in delivering the opinion of the Court in the case of the Liverpool and London Life and Fire Insurance Company v. The State of Massachusetts (a foreign corporation against a State), 10 Wallace, 566. He says: |