On a recent vacation I met a man of affairs who hailed from Detroit. To my inquiry whether he knew our friends, Referee Paul King or George Marston, he replied, "Ya! I know them well and they are able men! There are no better Referees anywhere but they make mistakes just like the rest of us." From this qualified compliment, I concluded he had failed to get all he wanted at their experienced, highly capable hands and I concluded, too, that perhaps his testimony may have been given with his hat off. (In London last summer, I learned from a Court Clerk that oaths are administered to certain witnesses only with their hats on otherwise, the oath was found meaningless to that class, he explained.) This incident is typical, I think, and a mild expression of the laymen's mental attitude to all Referees in Bankruptcy who are quite willing to agree that perfection is an irridescent dream anywhere on earth.

But with a better understanding brought about through the activities of our National Association of Referees in Bankruptcy has come a more tolerant intelligent view of the Referees' work and an appreciably lessened spirit of criticism. I get this reflex more accurately, I am sure, since my resignation as Referee in Bankruptcy here because of the laymen's speaking outright just what is in his mind in my presence now.

I am glad to renew contacts with you good friends in these general observations The Journal has kindly invited. Academic some of them may appear in this hurriedly prepared article and you may not agree with me altogether in some of my conclusions, I know.

The Bankruptcy Act was framed in mercy and has been administered in a spirit of universal benevolence. The public begins to recognize it as a Christianized method of "foregoing one's debtors" by congressional enactment. The barbarism that sanctioned the liberal parcelling out of the debtor's quivering flesh among his exacting creditors is neither myth nor tradition. The XII. tables fastened against the walls of the Forum verified the cruel fact and not until the fourth century of the Christian era was the shameful thing expunged. In the time of Henry VIII. we note the first crude idea under our system of jurisprudence of granting the debtor some relief; here the Lord Chancellor as keeper of the King's conscience took the debtor's goods and administered them in the debtor's behalf and relieved the debtor from the further burden.

"Equity is Equality" and deals with things; not with liberty or lives in the apportionment of the debtor's goods to the creditor's demands. Thus far and no farther shall the creditor go; the debtor himself belongs to the state and the family and that he may hereafter be free to serve them in the appropriate walks of civilized life, he is given future freedom from the results of his former misfortune and improvidence. From this equitable germ have grown the various acts of Parliament and Congress and the special

courts charged with the administration of this humane and just principle. To this extent, the commonwealth intervenes to preserve the further usefulness of the citizen and maintain his beneficial status. To a degree, it is like the duty of the state to the marriage relation; it cannot be utterly destroyed without cause and when assailed wantonly, the protecting and assisting arm is extended to conserve the best condition of citizenship. For the rapid rate of increase in our divorce rate today threatens to end in an inquest upon majorities of marriage itself, it is believed.

The press and popular oratory vie with each other in ringing the charges upon the beneficence of the Act of 1895 and the amendments thereto.

The wrecks of panic may soon be full rigged crafts upon the commercial seas, riding upon the tides of traffic to golden shores if one reads only the newspapers and congressional records or heeds the lamenting wail of the disappointed unmeritous litigant or the exceptional lawyer with grossly exaggerated value of service rendered "not adequately compensated". And this is far from all of it, we have seen.

The State laws in respect to all matters of the collection of debts hitherto invoked and still unrepealed may be condemned to stand mute at the request of some "son of New York" or elsewhere who failing to get in on the ground floor, proceeds to dynamite the whole establishment.

None for a moment can question the power of congress to enact remedial legislation, nor fairly doubt the duty. ability or integrity of our Federal Courts in administering and enforcing its mandates.

But the cry is heard that here we have a yoking of the living and dead together. That debtors of the country are given an opportunity to rid themselves of state debt and to re-embark in the vast concerns of commercial life; that through the Federal Courts a means of collecting debts from "going concerns" is made possible.

The philosophy of our state legislation through the Union is almost entirely founded on the maxim: "First in time; strongest in right." For a half of a century our state and people have been going forward, building up a vast trade. Our laws were framed to protect them in their diligence. and under these laws and their own diligence they have prospered; our people have prospered and our country has prospered by the energy and diligence of its citizens. But this diligence may defeat the vigilant creditor, bankrupt the debtor and destroy a "trading concern" in our own state and neighborhood, it is seen.

It has been recognized that a failing debtor's preference among his creditors is a "technical fraud" and is a "conclusive act of bankruptcy." Rather it is a species of special legislation, conclude some, whereby the "sleeping creditor," by Act of Congress, shall have the benefits accruing to the "vigilant" one. Known integrity serves a man as a bank