Mr. Hiller, Mr. Hart’s attorney, then asked Mrs. Hart why it was necessary to have so many gowns.

“At Palm Beach I had to change my gowns three times a day, and I had to have outfits of automobile clothes besides,” said Mrs. Hart.

“Do you wear the same dinner gown twice?” said the attorney.

“Women who can afford it never wear the same gown again at the same place,” she replied smilingly.

“What do you pay for your dinner gowns?”

“Three hundred dollars; sometimes five or six hundred.”

“Apiece?”

“Certainly,” snapped back the witness.

Court Decisions. The body of reports of important court decisions consists of summaries of the decisions with explanation of their significance, or of quotations from the decision when the language of the decree is important. The following stories are examples:

(1)

The first decision of the court of commerce to be received by the supreme court of the United States was reversed in an opinion handed down today.

The highest court gave a signal victory to the interstate commerce commission[Pg 151] by deciding that it has power to compel water lines to report to it regarding intrastate as well as interstate business.

The court of commerce has been subjected to sharp attack in congress because of a series of decisions over-turning work of the interstate commerce commission, and a bill for the abolishment of the tribunal is now pending in the house on a favorable report from a committee.

While the case before the court concerned immediately only water lines, the government attorneys declared that the defeat of the commission in this case would mean that railroads also need not report regarding intrastate business and the commission’s whole system of gathering reports relative to commerce would be worthless.

The order in question required reports regarding operating expenses and operating revenues of water lines, and affected principally lines on the great lakes. The commerce court held that the commission had power to require reports only regarding traffic carried under joint arrangement with railroad carriers, but not as to purely intrastate and port-to-port business.

Justice Day said that a mistake had been made by the commerce court in confusing knowledge of intrastate commerce with regulation of it. He said it was within the power of the commission to require a “showdown of the whole business”, intrastate as well as interstate. Justices Lurton and Lamar dissented.

(2)

Power of the Interstate Commerce commission to force “inside information” from steamship lines as to their earnings was affirmed today by the Supreme Court. The proposed scope of the commission’s inquiry into the steamship business of the great lakes[Pg 152] to secure information for adjusting rates, was approved, and the commerce court decision in the matter overruled.

This is the first of the cases involving a dispute of jurisdiction between the commerce court and the commission.

Applications for writs, rehearings, and new trials are often worth reporting at some length, as is shown in the following story:

Declaring that the issues involved in the case are of the “greatest public importance,” the department of justice today joined in the application of the losers in the so-called patent monopoly case, asking a rehearing before a full bench of the Supreme Court. The case was recently decided four to three in favor of the contention that the patentee’s control of his product is absolute.

The government’s application signed by Attorney-General Wickersham and Solicitor-General Lehmann vigorously declares that the court’s decision sustaining the right of a patentee to attach to the sale of an invention, restrictions stipulating that the purchaser must use only such supplies which are not patented as are bought from the patentee of the invention, seriously concerns the United States in a number of civil and criminal cases now pending under the Sherman law.

The decision, the government submits, “extends the power of property held under letters patent beyond the warrant of the constitution and the grant of the patent laws, and publishes it above authority of Congress to regulate commerce among the several states, and above the universal limitation expressed in the maxim ‘So use your own as not to injure another’s.’”

How to Make Court Proceedings Interesting. The selection and arrangement of interesting details in legal proceedings is shown in the following court story of a bankruptcy case, in which the reader’s attention is attracted by the feature played up at the beginning:

How to start a furniture installment house on less than $1000, vote yourself a salary of $10,000 a year, furnish a mansion and live like a prince—all on the income from the original invest- ment—was revealed to District Judge Van Buren yesterday in the questioning of John C. Winifred. The court was astounded and angered. When the hearing ended Winifred was on his way to the county jail to begin an indeterminate sentence for contempt as a result of “mushroom” financing.

The story of Winifred’s remarkable success at furniture finance was told during the court’s investigation of the bankrupt Bijou Furniture Company, 610 Devine Street, of which Winifred was owner. Winifred had a branch store at Plaintown. Two days before his creditors filed an involuntary petition of bankruptcy Winifred sold the branch “Furniture Club” business to Frances Hankow for $1,100.

John Whittle, counsel for the receiver, thought the $1,100 belonged to the creditors. Judge Van Buren agreed with him. Winifred was ordered to produce the money. When he appeared in court without it, the judge sent him to jail until he changes his mind.

Winifred operated a “furniture club,” members paying from 25 cents to $1 each week. Its 2,500 members had paid in more than $40,000 when the crash came.

The “furniture wizard” said he began business about two years ago with a capital of less than $1000. He voted himself an annual salary of $10,000, the money being taken from the accumulated[Pg 154] payments of club members. Attorney Whittle further found that the residence at 4621 Oakland Place had been purchased and then furnished without regard to expense. This property rests in the name of Mrs. Winifred. It was admitted that this luxury was paid for by the poor who can afford to buy furniture only by making a small payment each week.

Quoting from Publications. Government publications, pamphlets, books, and magazines often contain material for good news stories, particularly when copies can be secured so that the story may be printed simultaneously with the publication of the book or magazine. The use that may be made of an article in a scientific publication is shown in the following story, which in form is like the stories of speeches and other utterances discussed above:

Serious dangers in children’s parties, dancing schools, and even kindergartens are pointed out by Dr. Thomas S. Southworth of New York, writing in the Journal of the American Medical association. He finds them agents in spreading infectious colds leading to more serious ailments.

Against “light colds” themselves he warns parents, and urges the use of rational preventive measures. To parental carelessness, selfishness, and lack of common sense he attributes much of the illness among little children.

“The amount of injury done to young children each year by such colds can scarcely be estimated,” says Dr. Southworth. “During their prevalence the possibilities of infection are excellent if the child rides in public conveyances, or is taken to hotels or crowded shops.

“Children’s parties or dancing schools for the very young come under[Pg 155] the same ban. It is an open question whether the greatly increased opportunity for major and minor infections in kindergartens does not more than offset the real advantages they offer.

“Excluding exceptional cases, I am of the opinion that safeguarding the health of the young child is the more important consideration, and that any home worthy of the name should be able to furnish all the simple instruction and direction of the play instinct the child requires.”

SUGGESTIONS

  1. Get advance copies of speeches, statements, and reports when it is possible.
  2. Give direct, verbatim quotations whenever they are effective.
  3. Don’t misrepresent a speaker by “playing up” a quotation that, taken from its context, is misleading.
  4. Combine excerpts into a coherent, unified story.
  5. Select the form of beginning best suited to the subject matter.
  6. Set off as a paragraph a direct quotation of more than one sentence at the beginning of a story.
  7. Avoid too many or too involved “that” clauses in the lead.
  8. Put strong direct or indirect quotations at beginnings of paragraphs.
  9. Don’t place unemphatic phrases at the beginning of a paragraph, such as, “The speaker then said that,” etc.
  10. Avoid as far as possible combinations of direct and indirect quotations in the same paragraph.
  11. Avoid “I believe,” “I think,” etc., at the beginning of sentences of direct quotation.
  12. Make separate paragraphs of introductory statements like “He said in part,” and end them with a colon.
  13. Give in the lead of each day’s story of a trial, the essential explanatory details concerning the case.
  14. Vary explanatory phrases; don’t use repeatedly in the same story “he said,” “the report continues,” etc.
  15. Don’t fail to enclose in quotation marks every direct quotation.
  16. Use single quotation marks for quotations within other quotations.
  17. Use quotation marks only at the beginning of each paragraph of a continuous quotation of several paragraphs and at the end of the last paragraph.
  18. Quote important testimony verbatim.
  19. Keep yourself out of your interviews.

PRACTICE WORK

1. Write a news story of 500 words on the following address by Senator William E. Borah of Idaho on “Why We Need an Income Tax,” which you may say was delivered before a large audience at the Auditorium last night under the auspices of the Progressive Republican Club:

One of the many unfortunate things imposed from first to last upon this country by reason of the existence of slavery was the compromise in the constitution of the United States providing that direct taxes should be imposed in accordance with population.

To levy taxes according to population upon any kind of property is impracticable and cumbersome even when the tax is confined to the kind of property contemplated by the framers of the constitution. It is not too much to say that the clause with reference to imposing a direct tax would never have found its way into the constitution but through the fear which arose out of the belief that the North might impose an arbitrary and unjust tax upon slaves.

The discussion first arose over the protection of the slaves, and to guard against this the Southern delegates insisted upon an equal representation in Congress with the North. Gouverneur Morris and others declared they would never consent to counting a slave equal to his master. The discussion finally took a wider range owing to the existence of large tracts of land in the South of less value per acre than the land in the North; hence it was believed that these lands might be taxed unfairly.

At last, therefore, it was provided that direct taxes should be imposed according to population, and direct taxes, in my opinion,[Pg 157] referred alone to slaves and lands and the improvements on lands.

The Supreme Court in the Pollock case extended and broadened the terms of this somewhat unfortunate compromise so that it now not only covers lands but income from land, personal property, and income from personal property. This decision was made possible by invoking a mere technicality, that is, that a tax upon the rents of land is a tax upon the land.

I am not going to discuss at this time the decision further than to say I am one of those who believe that the income tax decision is as indefensible as a matter of law as the Dred Scott decision, and fraught with far more danger in its ultimate effect, if it is to become the settled law of the land, to the Republic.

The income tax is the fairest and most equitable of all the taxes. It is the one tax which approaches us in the hour of prosperity and departs in the hour of adversity. The farmer though he may have lost his entire crop must meet the taxes levied upon his property. The merchant though on the verge of bankruptcy must respond to the taxes imposed. The laborer who goes to the store to buy his food, though it be his last, must buy with whatever extra cost there may be imposed by reason of customs duties.

But the income tax is to be met only after you have realized your income. After you have met your expenses, provided for your family, paid for the education of your children for the year, then, provided you have an income left, you turn to meet the obligations you owe to the government. For instance, according to amendments recently pending relative to the income tax, a man with an income of ten thousand dollars would pay the modest sum of one hundred dollars. “Man as a human being owes services to his fellows, and one of the first of these is to support the government which makes civilization possible.”

It seems incomprehensible that anyone would seriously contend that property and wealth should not bear their fair share of the burdens of the general government. Adam Smith says, “The subjects of every state ought to contribute toward the support of the government as nearly as possible in proportion to their respective abilities, that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Notwithstanding our large standing army, our large navy, our all but criminal extravagance as a government, men are found who still unblushingly argue that this burden must all be laid upon consumption and nothing upon wealth, that is, that the man of most ordinary means must pay practically as much to the general government as the man with his uncounted millions. It is strange indeed that men can bring themselves to believe in so unfair and unjust a position.

They soothe their consciences to some extent by saying that it is a just tax, a fair tax, and that the property should indeed bear[Pg 158] its proportion of the expenses of the general government but an income tax causes men to commit perjury! Of course the man who says this would resent the idea that he would commit perjury, but his evangelical spirit leads him to look with particular care to the salvation of his neighbor’s soul. There is not a state in the Union today but has laws just as exacting with reference to accounting with personal property, just as onerous as an income tax law would be, and just as liable to encourage perjury. Yet the tax gatherer does not stop gathering taxes.

They say it is inquisitorial. Do you know of any kind of taxes which are not inquisitorial? For instance, under the internal revenue system now in existence, the whiskey of the citizen is taken possession of by the government, placed in a warehouse, locked up, and a key given to a United States official. In the collection of our customs duties, packages and the baggage of the citizen are taken, opened and inspected, and, male or female though the citizens may be, they are sometimes taken into a room and searched. Nothing could be more inquisitorial than this.

All these arguments are put forth in the hope of leading us away from the great and fundamental principle of equity in taxation, and that is that every man should respond to the burdens of the government in accordance with his ability. It is nothing less than a crime to put all the burdens of this government on consumption.

I think those who advocate the income tax merely as a revenue producing proposition rob the proposition of its moral foundation. We should contend for an income tax not simply for the purpose of raising revenue but for the purpose of framing a revenue system which will distribute the burdens of government between consumption and accumulated wealth, which will enable us to call upon property and wealth not in an unfair and burdensome way but in a just and equitable way to meet their proportionate expenses of the government, for certainly it will be conceded by all that the great expense of government is in the protection of property and of wealth.

A tax placed upon consumption is based upon what men want and must have. A tax placed upon wealth falls upon those who have enough and to spare and therefore have more which it is necessary for the government to protect. “All the enjoyments which a man can receive from his property come from his connection with society. Cut off from all social relations, a man would find wealth useless to him. In fact, there could be no such thing as wealth without society. Wealth is what may be exchanged and requires for its existence a community of persons with reciprocal wants.”

The general government, as we have said, has its armies and its navies and its great burden of expense for the purpose, among other things, of protecting property, protecting gathered and accumulated[Pg 159] wealth, of enabling men to make fortunes and to preserve their fortunes, and there is no possible argument founded in law or in morals why these protected interests should not bear their proportionate burden of government.

No man in his right mind would make an assault upon wealth as such, or upon property as such, or upon the honest acquisition of property—we simply call upon those who have the good fortune to have accumulated wealth to respond to the expenses of the great government under which they live and thrive.

2. Write a news story of 250 words on the following excerpts from a report made by the Division of Education of the Russell Sage Foundation on “A Comparative Study of Public School Systems in the Forty-eight States,” playing up the feature that you think will be of general interest to the readers of a daily paper in the metropolis of your state:

The average annual salary paid to public school teachers in the United States as a whole is $485. In one state, North Carolina, the average is only $200 per year. In another, Mississippi, it is $210, and in South Carolina $212. The wages received by school teachers constitute a measure of two things: first, the quality of ability of the teacher; second, the value the community puts upon the teacher’s services. The fact that the teacher’s wages are lower than those paid for almost any other sort of service means that as a nation we are neither asking for nor getting a high grade of service, and as a nation we place a low valuation on the teacher’s work.

While it is difficult to get accurate data on wages, the best available figures indicate that the average annual wages received by workers in five great occupations are about as follows:—

Carpenters $802
Coal miners 600
Factory workers 550
Common laborers 513
Teachers 485

Throughout the southern states thousands of rural teachers earn less than $150 per year. In one New England state hundreds of teachers earn less than $6.00 per week. In one county in a central Atlantic state the average for all teachers is $129 per year. In one southern state convicts from the penitentiaries are let to contractors at the rate of about $400 per year, while the state pays its teachers about $300 per year.

The average annual salary of teachers in the public schools in[Pg 160] each state in 1910 and the rank of the state, based on the average annual salary of school teachers, is as follows:—

1. California, $918; 2. Arizona, $817; 3. New York, $813; 4. Massachusetts, $757; 5. New Jersey, $731; 6. Washington, $692; 7. Montana, $645; 8. Colorado, $642; 9. Rhode Island, $647; 10. Utah, $592; 11. Illinois, $588; 12. Connecticut, $561; 13. Pennsylvania, $554; 14. Idaho, $549; 15. Ohio, $524; 16. Indiana, $523; 17. Oregon, $516; 18. Maryland, $515; 19. Minnesota, $486; 20. Michigan, $480; 21. Nevada, $470; 22. Wisconsin, $456; 23. Missouri, $443; 24. Wyoming, $439; 25. Kansas, $429; 26. Louisiana, $415; 27. Delaware, $414; 28. Nebraska, $411; 29. Oklahoma, $408; 30. Texas, $384; 31. New Mexico, $348; 32. North Dakota, $339; 33. Kentucky, $337; 34. South Dakota, $329; 35. New Hampshire, $328; 36. West Virginia, $323; 37. Alabama, $314; 38. Iowa, $302; 39. Tennessee, $293; 40. Arkansas, $284; 41. Florida, $276; 42. Virginia, $268; 43. Vermont, $266; 44. Georgia, $250; 45. Maine, $244; 46. South Carolina, $212; 47. Mississippi, $210; 48. North Carolina, $200.