Yorkville Enquirer

Courts Without Lawyers.

The expense of appeal to European industrial courts is very slight. Parties must usually, if physically able, appear in person, and as a rule they argue their own cases. Lawyers, indeed, are entirely excluded from practicing in the industrial courts of Germany, and rarely appear, except as the representatives of large employers or companies in France. In no case is a party obliged to hire a lawyer.

Court fees, too, are reduced to minimum. None whatever are required in Basel, Switzerland, and in France none are paid if the amount in dispute is less than 20 francs, or about $4. No fees are demanded in Germany if the parties reach a voluntary agreement and judgments in dispute which do not exceed in value 100 marks, or less than $25, cost only from one to three marks, or 25 to 75 cents. In all cases the fees are graded according to the amount in dispute.

As a result of this cheapness and rapidity of action no complaint is too petty to be brought before an industrial court. Disputes have been settled in Germany which involved as little as 20 pfennigs, or about 5 cents. Only about 7.5 per cent, indeed, of all the complaints brought in the German Empire in 1908 were for more than 100 marks, or under $25. In France, two years earlier, less than 2.5 per cent of all the cases were for over 300 francs, or less than $60. It is safe to say that wherever these courts have been established the great majority of suits have been for less than $10. To some Americans such cases may seem trivial. But many a European workman has doubtless been prevented, by having at hand the means of obtaining his rights cheaply and quickly, from being embittered by a sense of powerlessness against injustice.—American Review of Reviews.