paragraphs with what "unwritten" law may best
suit the owner of his conscience and his pen. "Contempt of court" in
its original significance is something known today only to the reader of
text books.**

*Cf. "Sensational Journalism and the Law," in "Moral Overstrain," by
G.W. Alger.

**By the New York Penal Code section 143, an editor is only guilty of
contempt of court (a misdemeanor) if he publishes "a false or grossly
inaccurate report" of its proceedings. The most insidious, dangerous,
offensive and prejudicial matter spread broadcast by the daily press
does not relate to actual trials at all, but to matters entirely
outside the record, such as what certain witnesses of either side could
establish were they available, the "real" past and character of the
defendant, etc. The New York Courts, under the present statute, are
powerless to prevent this abuse. In Massachusetts half a dozen of our
principal editors and "special writers" would have been locked up long
ago to the betterment of the community and to the increase of respect
for our courts of justice.

Each State has its own particular problem to face, but ultimately the
question is a national one. Lack of respect for law is characteristic
of the American people as a whole. Until we acquire a vastly increased
sense of civic duty we should not complain that crime is increasing
or the law ineffective. It would be a most excellent thing for an
association of our leading citizens to interest itself in criminal-law
reform and demand and secure the passage of new and effective
legislation, but it would accomplish little if its individual members
continued to evade jury service and left their most important duty to
those least qualified by education or experience to perform.* It would
serve some of this class of reformers right, if one day, when after a
life-time of evasion, they perchance came to be tried by a jury of their
peers, they should find that among their twelve judges there was not one
who could read or write the English language with accuracy and that all
were ready to convict anybody because he lived in a brown-stone front.

*"The Citizen and the Jury," in "Moral Overstrain," by G.W. Alger.

Merchants, who in return for a larger possible restitution habitually
compound felonies by tacitly agreeing not to prosecute those who have
defrauded them, have no right to complain because juries acquit the
offenders whom they finally