a text book of over 500 pages packed with down-to-date subject matter, together with copious case citations and foot-notes.

Although designed primarily for Michigan lawyers the work has a broad foundation and the pleading and practice carefully set forth and analyzed therein are so fundamentally logical and sound that they may safely be adopted as precedents in our sister states.

Its chatty, narrative style and the lucid statement of facts and cases will prove a welcome contrast to the ponderous phraselogy in which this subject has been heretofore presented.

Every one of the fourteen chapters bespeaks the author's first hand knowledge of his subject, and the ripe scholarship Mr. Cornelius brings to his work. The sets of forms gathered together are alone worth the price of the book.

As we have stated, Mr. Cornelius' work is a text book on the important subject of executory contracts for the sale of land, and a manual of pleading and practice combined. It is divided into fifteen ample chapters.

Chapter I stresses the importance of the preliminary agreement, with practical suggestions as to what to do and what to avoid. The duty of counsel at the closing of transaction is frankly and fairly discussed.

Chapter II deals with the Statute of Frauds as applied to estates and interests in land; of the sufficiency of the preliminary agreement; and of oral contracts partly performed.

Chapter III deals with forms of preliminary contracts; of land contracts and assignments thereof; of escrow agreements, and powers of attorney in relation to interests in real estate.

Chapter IV dwells on the nature of the estate created by a land contract in the vendee therein; the execution of land contracts; the parties thereto; and the construction thereof.

Chapter V points out the approved methods of correcting defects in title; what constitutes marketable title; remedying defects by affidavit; etc.

In Chapter VI the action to quiet title is discussed at length. Chapter VII deals with specific performance. While Chapter VIII discusses parties to the action and Probate Court proceedings.

Chapter IX handles forfeiture of land contracts and discusses proceedings brought by the vendor for repossession. Chapter X groups cases illustrating relief from forfeiture; also those in which forfeiture was sustained. Chapter XI deals with foreclosure of the vendor's lien; with pleading and practice outlined.

The reformation of land contracts is dealt with in Chapter VII. Chapter XIII is of actions for fraudulent misrepresentations. While this important branch is exhaustively treated with illustrative pleadings and briefs in current Michigan cases only, yet the basic principles involved therein are logically the same in other states as well.

Chapter XIV deals with real estate brokers. The closing chapter,, XV, treats of Options, and is a text book in itself.

Lawyers generally are to be congratulated on having available for court and office practice Mr. Cornelius' really excellent book, and the author himself deserves the thanks and the patronage of his brethren for the labor and thought put into "THE LAW OF LAND CONTRACTS.-Ben Chapoton Hughes of the Detroit, Michigan, Bar.

REGULATION OF REAL ESTATE BUSINESS VALID

The most notable legal decision directly affecting the real estate business ever rendered was recently made by the United States Supreme Court, when it held that the Tennessee real estate brokers' license law is in all respects valid. The power of the several states to regulate the real estate business by law is affirmed as a proper exercise of the police power under the constitution. The Tennessee law is declared to be valid in all of its provisions.

The National Association of Real Estate Boards has been vitally interested in this case, and through its general counsel, prepared the briefs and arguments which were presented to the Supreme Court. Officers of the association are elated with the outcome of the case and are now assured that as far as the courts are concerned, at least, the propriety and desirability of regulating the real estate business for the benefit of the public has been forever determined.

The Tenessee Real Estate License Law was adopted in 1921 and was based upon the Model License Law prepared by the National Association in 1913. Some months ago, in a case known as R. W. Bratton v. William Chandler, the United States District Court of the Western District of Tennessee held that this law was unconstitutional, as being in violation of the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution of the United States and certain clauses of the constitution of Tennessee, and an injunction was issued restraining the Tennessee Real Estate Commission from enforcing it. Aside from the general questions involved, the court held the law to be void because in its opinion

a man might be deprived of his lawful rights to engage in business without "due notice and hearing."

SUPREME COURT DECISION

The case was appealed directly to the United States Supreme Court, which reversed the findings of the lower court. In its decision which is technical in phraseology, the Supreme Court holds that

1. Regulation of the real estate business is constitutional;

2. The Tennessee statute will not deprive anyone of rights without "due process of law";

3. "Action under the statute is intended to be open and direct, not to be remitted in any part to secrecy, prejudice and intrigue";

4. "The statute is drawn with care to details and their importance, importance to the business regulated and the persons who will desire to engage in it";

5. "The act construed as we construe it will take no power from the commission necessary to the performance of its duties, and will leave no power with it that it can exercise to the detriment of any right assured to an applicant for a license by the Constitution of the United States";

6. The decision of the lower court ordering a temporary injunction be reversed and the validity of the act be sustained.

The briefs presented in this case by the National Association, are an able compilation of the arguments on behalf of regulating the real estate business.

This decision is of especial importance to the fourteen states which now have real estate license laws. The general legality of these laws can no longer be questioned. Realtors and others interested in protecting the public, and in the establishment of high qualifications of knowledge, experience and character on the part of those who wish to engage in the real estate profession, can now give their attention and efforts to raising the standards of existing and future license laws and the development of administrative efficiency.

THE PUBLIC DEFENDER

The following figures present a strong argument for the necessity of a Public Defender in the Criminal Courts of the larger cities:

The figures are not correct to the dollar, but are furnished by the County Auditors in each case as approximately the sums paid out on warrants. In Chicago can be found almost any day or week one or more attorneys defending persons charged with crime who have themselves appeared as defendants in the same courts.

The class of attorneys generally appointed to defend are those who solicit the business from the judges. They are mediocre in ability, and unsuccessful in general practice. Probably half of the $34,000 paid out by Wayne county, Michigan, goes to young men who have but recently, graduated and passed the bar examination; while in Boston

those named to defend are from the older and ablest defense lawyers at the bar. So it goes.

In the city of New York there was paid in 1919 to attorneys appointed to defend felony cases over $159,000; this money went largely to incompetents who had served the Judges in election campaigns. In 1921 owing to a revulsion in feeling over the courts thus paying political debts, the local bar association insisted that the best talent available be selected with the result that in place of court-room-hangers-on eminent counsel was named, among others Henry M. Alexander, Williard Parker Butler, Herbert Barry, Lloyd C. Griscom, Edward G. Benedict, Philip Carpenter, Wm. Traverse Jerome, Alfred W. Varian, John G. Milburn, Wm. Allen Butler, Henry W. Taft, Nelson Shipinan, Paul D. Cravath, Joseph S. Auerbach, Abram I. Elkins, Joseph H. Choate, Thomas B. Felder, Wm. D. Guthrie, Noah A. Stancliffe, Benjamin G. Paskus, Elihu Root, Jr., Stephen Brooks Rosenthal, Charles E. Hughes, Jr., Delancey Nicoll, Cornelius J. Sullivan and Charles S. Whitman.

Largely these men constituting the flower of New York's best legal talent served without pay as a protest against the old system. Chicago, Cook county, spent in 1922 on attorneys appointed by the Courts to defend persons charged with crime, over $60,000.

St. Louis contributed $49,000; New Orleans, $30,000; Boston, $28,000; Philadelphia, $27,000; Baltimore, $25,000; San Francisco, $25,000; the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, $20,000; Detroit over $34,000.

In these appointments the lawyers named by the Judges are young men, most of whom are mere law students who solicited the practice in order that they might live, pay office rent and gain experience. It is notorious that in many cases those selected as defenders are habitues of the police and other criminal courts; men who hang around to get what they can in the way of crumbs that obligingly fall from the hands of the Judiciary.

SOCIALISM IN OPERATION.

A mildly socialistic cabinet in Sweden has come to grief, collapsing as a result of two utterly irreconcilable propositions. One of these was a proposal to nationalize the steel industry, one of Sweden's most important commercial and industrial assets, and the other was a proposition for doles in the form of unemployment pay-a subsidy for idleness which Great Britain is finding far worse than the disease, or,

as Daniel O'Connell called a similar proposition in the extenson of poor law relief to Ireland, feeding a dog with a piece cut off its own tail.

Socialism believes that wealth, and especially the production of wealth, is based entirely upon labor whose savings have been appropriated and are used as capital. Certainly there is no capital but saved wealth and it may, therefore, be called the foundation of the world's business. But the superstructure is not capital, and far less labor, but credit, without which there can be no employment and no savings out of which to pay unemployment doles. The belief that the taking over of capital and the means of production would mean also taking over the entire structure of business is the most dangerous will o' the wisp in pursuit of which misled humanity has ever ventured.

No socialist can see further than the end of his nose, even when he is being led by it. He thinks that the best credit in a country is government credit, and he has never stopped to analyze what government credit is. It is nothing more or less than the aggregate credit of private taxpayers. It is the percentage that private initiative and enterprise pays out of what it saves. Without the taxpayer to fall back upon, government credit deteriorates and finally evaporaes. The trouble with Russia is not that capital has disappeared, for that could be replaced in short order with the assurance of safety. It is that the whole superstructure of credit has disappeared, and that can only be replaced by a reestablishment of a reputation for common honesty, which is the very soul of credit.

With the establishment of government operation of the means of production, the large taxpayers would immediately disappear and the country would be bankrupt. The burden upon the small taxpayers would become intolerable. There would be no profit in the government enterprises. Profits are, after all, represented by the narrow margin between efficiency and indifference or, in other words, between private initiative and irresponsible bureaucracy. Every municipally-owned enterprise, after losing the first private initiative which may have given it a creditable start-as in the case of the cities of Birmingham and Glasgow-degenerates ultimately into a condition of annual deficit. Even in the British colonies, where there is at least honesty in the public service, there is not a single government-owned and operated railroad which is paying all the interest on the bonds.

Sweden may congratulate herself that she is learning and invaluable lesson at great, but not ruinous, cost. We may all pray that the United States will never submit itself to a practical demonstration.