simply announced as intended to deal with "relation, hiring and discharge, compensa tion, strikes, etc." It thus seems probable that the entire scope of the series is the rights and duties of master and servant inter se. In a work .so vast and devoted to a subject so prolific of differences of opinion, it would be easy to pick flaws; but it is much more just and useful to say simply that here is an honest and accurate piece of work, in dispensable within its chosen field. CORRESPONDENCE. To the Editor of THE GREEN BAG : Sir:—A considerable agitation is arising in Suffolk and other counties of the Common wealth regarding the appointment of young women as official stenographers in the su perior court. The practice is expanding and the displacement of experienced men appears to be designed, not because the statute fixed compensation of the young woman is less, but for some reason not apparent to the ordi nary observer. However, the selection of women for work of this nature, has not been made without protest from some of the most prominent attorneys. It is declared that even in actions like suits against common carrier corpora tions for personal injury, the evidence as to the past and present health of suitors is al most invariably of such character that no woman should be asked or expected to take it clown and read it aloud in open court. Often in Boston, Dedham and in Cambridge, lawyers have indicated in private conference with the presiding judges that they appre hend embarrassment in submitting evidence about to be introduced, in the presence of female official stenographers. Such a case occurred in one of the sessions in Pemberton square not long ago. and on a prearranged request of counsel for both parties, the young woman in attendance was excused and a male stenographer brought in. The embarrassment of such instances is naturally felt by members of the bar and not less by the presiding justices, it may be
assumed. And it is to be said that the close and exacting labor of taking down verbatim case after case unceasingly in court for five days each week—for all cases are recorded in full, no matter how small the issue—in volves an expenditure of nervous energy which taxes the vitality of strong manhood, to say nothing of the precarious health of young women. It is a significant circumstance that in no other large city of the United States are women thus engaged in the higher courts; nor has the subject even been given con sideration in England. Law reform, in mat ters of procedure, in the British Isles is ever a living subject of discussion, but we may be sure that the sight of a woman acting as the official recorder of all sorts of testimony will not be visible in any English court in our day or generation. In Massachusetts for merly, as is well known, capital cases and divorce proceedings came only before the Supreme Court. The Superior Court consid ers all them now; and slight reflection will persuade any parent, at least, of the impolicy of introducing young women into the atmos phere of such distressing controversies and the vulgarities that sometimes develop in the course of searching cross-examinations. I would not undertake to limit the hope of women for wider fields of effort, and yet it may well be considered whether labor of this sort had not better be left to the sturdier and stronger sex. There is, too, a deepen ing conviction among lawyers and judges that for rapid work, the taking of technical medical testimony and matter involving ma chinery and all sorts of trade terms and com mercial usage, a man's report is uniformly better than a woman's. Client and council alike, of course, ought to be given the best practicable service in the trial of causes, with the fewest uncer tainties and inaccuracies in the record of the court's proceedings, and if there is any frailty to be dreaded in the work of women, that of her labors in the complexity of law courts is surely not the least. Boston, July 14. 1904. W. B. W.
