Reconstruction and the Legal Profession

Abstract

The Great War has brought every country of Europe face to face with vast and critical problems of Reconstruction-political, economic, social. Our own country also, in its political, economic and social institutions, feels the tremors of the great European convulsion. Despite the immunity of our land from devastation and our comparative freedom from the burdens of the conflict, our participation in the war has brought us problems of critical importance to the continuance of our political and social structure. What are to be our international relations of the future? What is to be our domestic polity with respect to the division of powers between the national government and the states? Under the pressure of war emergencies the national government has vastly extended its control over the activities of the individual. It has regulated the prices at which we could buy our bread and our coal; it has built houses for certain of its employees; it has taken over the control and management of various public utilities. People are asking whether such governmental activities should be abandoned in time of peace; whether vital necessities such as transportation systems, telegraphs, coal miries, should be returned to private ownership and operation just as before the war. The cost of creating vast armies, of enlarging our navy, and of developing a merchant marine has raised new problems of government finance. Lastly, and more important than all in my judgment, are the problems relating to the relations of capital and labor, and to the preservation of our institutions against the menace of unrest and extreme radicalism called Bolshevism.