The Man in Court | Page 4

say.
The history of the passage of the adultery act presents one of the most ghastly jokes ever perpetrated by a State Legislature.
For years such a bill had been introduced in the New York Legislature and had been passed by either the Assembly or the Senate without comment and then quietly killed in the other house. It was obvious that such a law could not be properly enforced and its blackmailing possibilities were manifest, yet no one, not even Governor Hughes, who was then in office, could be openly opposed to its passage.
The tender morality of the community would not allow a public discussion.
It was said, at the time, that when the representative of a society for the suppression of vice called on one member asking him to introduce the bill, he declined to do so on the ground that he represented a Fifth Avenue District and it would make him too unpopular among his constituents. When the bill had been introduced by another member and came up for final passage, it was decided, since Governor Hughes had vetoed many political bills of members of both houses, to put him in a dilemma. If the bill were presented to him he would have to sign an absurd statute or declare himself the friend of unrighteousness. He signed it and the bill became a law. Since its enactment there have been ridiculously few convictions under it.
The successive carelessness, timidity, and levity of the Legislature is depressing, but there is an encouraging increase of interest on the part of the public. The average man is not merely interested in the problem; he appears to take the sensible view that the "social evil" is not so much a moral question as a condition, a problem to be met like other problems. We have become less concerned with the private morals of our fellow citizens than with their health, safety, and the prevention of unnecessary suffering. We perceive that the courts are only our agents and are not directly responsible for what they do; they are following instructions given by our ancestors and which we have neglected to abolish or modify.
The visitor leaves the Night Court with a strange sense of having his social values overthrown. He feels almost sympathetic with the women whom he has seen. They may be offenders against morals and the social order, but they are human beings over whom the waters of civilization seem to sweep with relentless flood. The frightful waste of life and energy seems inexcusable. And it is as though some mill dam had burst and was flowing in a terrific torrent down a river bed along which a few are drawn white and drowned.
The ordinary man knows that the women who go under are such a small proportion of those who escape, that it seems either a ghastly joke or a terrible tragedy. The whole paraphernalia of the court-room merely accents the contrast between those who are caught and those who go free.
But all criminal courts are always unpleasant. And humanity if seen only in the setting of a criminal trial would be a discouraging object. Turning to the more civil court, we find an almost equal unfitness between the courts and modern conditions.

II
THE CIVIL COURT
In a twenty-four-story office building, on a smooth gliding elevator, up seventeen stories, down a low-ceilinged corridor, past fireproof doors labeled: "Clerk's Office," "Judge's Chambers," "Witness Room," we find the typical modern court. The old idea of a very pseudo-classic courthouse on a placid village green to which the neighboring county squires have ridden, and where the jail is in the cellar and the town recorder in the attic, is fast disappearing. The old courthouse in the city, of red sandstone with battlements and turrets, minarets, and a clock tower, seems out of date.
The white marble palaces of the higher courts wherein broad stairways, paneled mahogany, stained glass, and soft noiseless carpets giving an air of repose and refined culture, are not altogether consistent with the modern spirit. The man on the street does not understand whether the marble statues on the roof are symbols of justice or late presidents of the United States. The usual courthouse of twenty years ago was a mixture of armory and Gothic church.
In the larger courthouses where there are many terms or parts in one building, there is an air of confusion. Rotundas, corridors, stairways, and elevators are constantly filled with a moving crowd of lawyers waiting for their cases to be tried, clients who have had appointments, witnesses who have been subpoenaed to come to court and when they get there find it is not one court, but thirty. The latter are found wandering dazedly about asking anyone who will stop to listen if they know in which part the case of Martin _vs._