The Editor's Bag those of the serious reviews and news journals. To be not simply entertain ing, but also useful, the Green Bag must try to help its readers to keep in touch with current legal literature and current events of direct concern to the pro fession. It must aim, in some measure, to digest current literature and current facts, to serve, indeed, as a sort of legal review of reviews for busy lawyers. At first glance, this would seem to in volve considerable heaviness, for how can such a review free itself from the seriousness of the subjects which it with deals? And how can a magazine devoted to the lighter side of the law consistently strive for an object entailing seriousness and solemnity? But there is really no dilemma. A magazine can direct its readers' atten tion to the most important contem porary developments in the science and practice of law, can indicate events of special significance, can roughly estimate the value to be ascribed to recent con tributions to legal literature, and can epitomize a vast amount of that bulky material of which the law is so hope lessly prolific, without becoming heavy and tedious in consequence. This it can do by brevity and clearness of presentation, by variety and attrac tiveness of arrangement, by earnest effort to make every subject as inter esting as possible. Accordingly the object of the Green Bag is to serve the needs of the profession by acting as a light and entertaining review such as will satisfactorily meet the want of those thousands and thousands of law yers—a majority of the profession— who by reason of scanty leisure or other circumstance cannot read more than one law periodical regularly, and would prefer to look to that alike for enter tainment and for information.
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NEW YORK GAS LAW UPHELD The significant 80-cent gas decision handed down January 4 by the United States Supreme Court was anticipated by the article by Mr. Frank Hendrick contributed to this number of the Green Bag, and tends to bear out the con tentions of this writer. This interesting decision may be examined in many different aspects, but in its simplest phase it can be pointed out as a denial of the right of the court below to value the franchises of the New York Consolidated Gas Company at a higher figure than at the time of con solidation, without positive evidence being adduced of an increase in value. Whereas the franchises of the consti tuent companies had been valued by them at $7,781,000 at the time of the consolidation, Mr. Justice Hough, in the United States Circuit Court for the southern district of New York, had ruled that the company was entitled to a fair return on $12,000,000, the capitalized value of the franchises given by the state . As both Circuit Court and Supreme Court agreed in maintaining that good will could not be capitalized, the chief difference of opinion arose in connection with the franchises. "A franchise is valuable," Judge Hough had held, "because it authorizes the use for gain of private property in a particular manner I am com pelled to consider franchises not only as property, but as productive and inherently valuable property, and to add their value, if ascertainable, to com plainant's capital account." Mr. Justice Peckham of the United States Supreme Court was careful to state that the question of the method of ascertaining the value of franchises was left undecided. But he held (we are re ferring only to newspaper reports) that
