1, and digested in volume 41, Century Digest, under the topic "Public Lands," section 617, and verify the correctness of the label.

The alphabetical arrangement of this complete table develops some interesting and celebrated cases. The Dartmouth College Case will be easily found in its proper place under "Dartmouth College v. Woodward," with a citation to 1 New Hampshire, 111, and with the information that the state court was reversed by the United States Supreme Court, published in 4 Wheaton, 518, 4 Lawyers' Edition, 629. The digest references carry one to fourteen different points decided.

Many cases had to be specially treated because of the fact they are known under an "alias." Therefore you will be able to locate alphabetically the Dred Scott decision under "Dred" as well as under "Scott"; "Girard Will Case" under "Girard," with a cross-reference to "Vidal v. Girard's Ex'rs"; the "Jefferson Davis Case," under "Jefferson," with a cross-reference to "Davis' Case"; and many others.

In addition, there will be something over 950,000 other titles of more or less interest, all arranged in their proper alphabetical order, and each carrying a reference to every standard publication in which the case has been reported, and also references to the topics and sections of the American Digest System (Century and Decennial Digests) where the various points of law are digested.

It will be seen from the foregoing sentence that the phrase "Table of Cases" is inadequate. The phrase is also a hard and cold one, and makes no appeal to the lawyer's imagination. "Title-Index to American Case Law" would sound more interesting. "Finding List of American Case Law" is al

so interesting, and is a very accurate description of this table.

Volume 1 of this table containing “AB" has been published. "C" contains 730 pages-too much to be added to the first volume without splitting. Rather than do this, volume 1 will have a smaller number of pages than the subsequent volumes, which will probably be divided as follows: vol. 2, C-F; vol. 3, G-L; vol. 4, M-R; vol. 5, S-Z.

Volume 1 will place in the hands of thousands of lawyers a goodly portion of this title-index, or findng list, and an examination of its pages will not only impress one with the magnitude of the task of preparing and arranging the material for this Table, and of printing and binding it, but will also suggest a question as to the sources from which we gathered the information which the Table contains. Work of "preparing copy" was begun on the Decennial Table August 9, 1906, and the actual work of setting the matter on the linotype machines was begun September 9, 1911.

First, there are the titles of the cases, and this means the title of every reported case from a court of last resort from 1658 to 1906, a period of 249 years. Following the title is the information as to the various publications in which each case has been reported. If the case has been appealed to the United States Supreme Court, this information is given in parenthesis, showing the disposition. Many cases show additional affirmances, reversals, etc., by higher courts in the same state, and miscellaneous proceedings on rehearing, etc., all of which is very valuable. Then, in addition to this information, the Table shows where each point in every case is digested in the only complete digest of American case law; that is, the American Digest System.

The mechanical methods pursued in collecting and tabulating this information may prove of interest. In the first place, in order to secure the titles of the cases it was necessary to have a typewritten copy made of the table of Cases Reported in every volume of American law reports. This was not all done at one time, however, or in this literal way. It will be apparent to those who are familiar with the National Reporter System that the tables of official citations printed on blue paper in the various volumes of the Reporters furnish this information for the period of time covered by the Reporter System. The tables for the reports published before the Reporter System have been in the making for several years. All these tables were cut up, and each title pasted on a slip and made a part of the "plant" of titles.

For the past fifteen years the work of compiling and verifying this list has been going on, and references have been added to the various selected-case series and other standard reports, for cases which have been reported in these publications. This plant of titles with parallel references has been verified three times by referring to the original reports. It has been used by the West Publishing Company for some years in verifying the correctness of cases cited by judges in their opinions-for every case cited is verified before publication in the Reporters. Every case cited in a current opinion was checked to this list of titles. If the judge's citation agreed exactly with the citation found in the plant, it was assumed to be correct. If there was the slightest variation, reference was made to the volume and page of the report in which the case. was to be found, and the judge's citation, or the plant of titles, corrected, as

the case might call for. Using this plant of titles for verification purposes in this way has given this Table the test of years of actual use, and makes it as nearly perfect as a reference list can be made.

It was next necessary to add to each of the 950,000 separate titles in this title plant the references to the topic and section of the Century Digest and the Decennial Digest where each point had been digested. The first step was to cut up the fifty volumes of the Century and the twenty volumes of the Decennial and paste each paragraph on a separate slip. It was then necessary to go through this plant of pasted paragraphs, checking it back to the original digests, in order to see that no slips were lost, and to mark, on each slip the volume and name of the digest and the topic and section under which each slip belonged. There were then two plants, one of titles arranged by volume and page of the reports, and one of paragraphs arranged by topic and section of the Century and Decennial Digests. The first plant consisted of nearly a million slips, and the second plant of over two million. From the nature of the case, it was necessary, before the two plants could be thrown together, to rearrange the two million slip plant on the same basis as the one million slip plant, namely, by volume and page of the reports. Here, too, it must be borne in mind that this rearrangement was not all undertaken at one time. The Century Digest was cut and pasted and rearranged long before the later volumes of the Decennial Digest were published, and the Decennial was cut, pasted, and arranged, volume by volume, as it was published.

Now, after both plants were in the same general arrangement, the next step was to throw the plants together, pin

ning the Digest paragraphs for each case behind the proper title slip in the plant of titles. In order to be sure that the plant of titles was complete, and that the Digest references were properly attached to the right cases, it was necessary to check all of this matter, page by page, with all of the Reports and Reporters. When a case was reported in two or more publications, any variations in the title had to be noted, and crossreferences made from these variations to the title as it appeared in the State Reports. For example, if the case was reported as Snyder v. State in the State Reports, and Schneider v. State somewhere else, a cross-reference title would. be compiled as follows: Schneider v. State, see Snyder v. State. Incidentally, it was necessary to prepare thousands of these cross-reference titles.

Since beginning the work in 1906 a force of persons varying from 20 to 60 has been engaged in gathering the material and preparing it for printing. The slips for the Table are uniform, 4x7 inches in size, and so far the Table has required 2,760,750 slips. These slips are filed away in boxes, and already the material prepared requires 1,227 boxes, each box containing 2,250 slips. The slips are consecutively numbered for convenience in handling and refiling, and a boy can stamp, with the numbering machine, an average of 12,000 slips a day. Merely to number the required slips would take, therefore, about ten months. The machine weighs sixteen ounces, and in numbering 12,000 slips a day the boy is lifting six tons. Nevertheless he has not yet gone on the Orpheum circuit.

The slips used, if placed end to end, would make a pink paper ribbon three hundred and twenty-seven miles long, or would reach up into space 1,726,560

feet. The aeroplane altitude record is only 13,943 feet, being held by Roland G. Garros of France.* If Garros had run this pink ribbon as a sounding line from his 'plane to the earth, he could have measured his distance with it a hundred times and still have had enough paper left to write an account of his experience. Or, if the ribbon were laid along the ground, it would reach nearly from New York City to Richmond, Virginia. If the slips were theater tickets, there would be enough to send all the inhabitants of Manhattan and the Bronx to the "show," except about 65,000 chaffeurs, street car conductors, and motormen, who would have to remain on duty. If the slips were ballots, they would equip all the inhabitants-men, women and children-of our five territories with two ballots apiece, and leave some over for souvenirs.

One hundred reams of paper have already been used in preparing these slips, and they weigh 9,250 pounds, or more than four and a half tons.

When the Table is transferred from paper slips to metal plates for printing, it will weigh 25,000 pounds.

The above, however, is the mere physical weight. How heavily those slips weigh upon the clerical force handling them goes into another region of dynamics, for the bulk of this table is by no means its most important or impressive feature. The time that is put into the checking and rechecking necessary to secure accuracy is much more than its straight preparation. In order that a table of cases may be taken for granted, nothing can be taken for granted in preparing it.

With many clerks handling the millions of slips, it was necessary to take

*Subject to change without notice.-Ed.

extraordinary precautions to prevent the loss or destruction of any part of the plant. The first precaution was to have the work done in a large room wholly apart from all other work. Special cabinets were made for filing away the plant, and waste paper baskets were carefully examined each night before the visit of the janitor, in order to ascertain that no slips had been accidentally thrown away.

One page of the Table, when completed, will contain about 6,400 ems. There will be approximately 9,000 pages, making 57,600,000 ems. A typesetting machine, working day and night with expert operators, can set about 36,000 ems. It would therefore take one machine, working double time, five years and four months of working time to merely put the Table into type, after it is completely "prepared."

Although the Table will only occupy five volumes, whereas the text of the Decennial fills twenty volumes, nevertheless the work is of such a nature and the typographical arrangement such that it will take as long to "set" the Table as it did to put the entire text of the Digest into type.

As the Company has twenty-eight ma

chines, instead of the one used for the illustration, they are going to beat the above estimate somewhat, in spite of the fact that the National Reporter System, the Key-Number Series of the American Digest, and various other publications have to be kept going.

Consideration of some of these features will indicate why no publishers heretofore have ever cared to take upon themselves the task of preparing a Complete Table of American Cases, in spite of the fact that every practicing lawyer realizes its value to the profession. It will also be seen that there were reasons why the Table was not published as soon as the text of the Decennial was finished.

There was once a publisher who got out a book with great care and triumphantly proclaimed in his publisher's preface that at last a book had been published which was letter perfect. The story goes that an error was found on the title page. The West Publishing Company does not hope to produce a reference list six times the size of an unabridged dictionary of the English language, and make it perfect, but it has taken extraordinary precaution to secure accuracy and completeness.

IN "JULIUS CAESAR," when Shaks

pere showed the mob calling on Marc Anthony to read Cæsar's will before they decided on what they would do to his murderers, he illustrated both the natural curiosity over how the deceased planned to distribute his estate as well as how tremendously the provisions of a will may change the point of view. It was the fact that they, as the Roman Public, were named as Cæsar's heir that stimulated the mob to revenge. So from time immemorial the provisions of wills have made and unmade men, and played an all-important part not merely in the estimate and memories. of the dead but in the lives of the living. All literature is so full of stories and romances of the surprises and disappointments of heirs, and of wills, good and bad, curious and unexpected, that Kipling, in this quotation from his delightful little poem on the good old three-volume novel of bygone days, represents wills as part of the regular stock in trade of the novelist.

Most lawyers will agree with Lord Coke that "wills and the construction of them do more perplex a man than

-Rudyard Kipling.

any other learning; and to make a certain construction of them exceedeth jurisprudentum artem." It is impossible to explain to a layman those principles of law that are involved in such cases as that of the will of the pious Jew who bequeathed his estate for the instruction of the Jewish youths of London in the learning of their religion, which the courts decided was as good as a public charitable bequest, but could not be so applied, and carried out what they were pleased to call the testator's intention by using his money to maintain a Christian Foundling Asylum.

It is with a feeling of some fear that a man to-day writes a will without the advice of a lawyer, so the quaint and picturesque wills of the past are becoming more uncommon. The spread of the news of litigation over wills by the newspapers has done much to teach the public to heed the advice that “a man may work out his religion from within and for himself, but where it comes to writing a will, the advice of a good, level-headed lawyer cannot be overestimated."

Actual wills, as they illustrate the customs and habits of a generation or country, or as they mirror the characteristics of some famous person, are even more interesting and absorbing than the wills of fiction.

While it is curious to observe that the