CHAPTER XV.
“Is this law? Aye, marry is it?”
“In the matter of the estate of Lorin French deceased, the application of Louis Browning for letters executory is before the court. Who represents the applicant?”
“The firm of Bruff & Baldwin, your honor,” replied a tall gentleman with spectacled nose and a beardless face.
“Are there contestants?” said the Court.
Then from their seats within the bar of the court room there arose a decorous multitude of lawyers, short and tall, old and young, fat and lean, the white-bearded Nestors, and the complacent, chirping chipmunks of the bar, and in various forms of expression it clearly appeared that there were contestants.
“I think,” said his Honor with a weary smile, “that my associates might have sent this case to another department, for I have had a surfeit of contested will cases. Proceed, Mr. Bruff.”
“In behalf of the Society of Bug Hunters, who are legatees under a former will,” said a sepulchral voice, proceeding from the rotund diaphragm of a bald-headed and full-bearded gentleman, “I have twenty-three objections to offer to the admission to probate of the alleged will of Lorin French, and—”
“Will my learned brother Lester permit me to interrupt him for a moment,” twanged a catarrhal tone, “while I state that I wish my appearance entered here on behalf of the recognized natural son of the deceased, and I protest—”
“On the part of the Australian cousins of Lorin French,” shrieked a lean man with red hair, “I have a preliminary objection to offer to the will being read in court at all, and—”
“I object!”
“I except!”
“Will your honor please note the exception of the Nevada heirs?”
“I demand to be heard!”
Then from the entire front of the bar came cries of excited counsel, learned in all law save that of decorum, while the Court rapped for order.
“Gentlemen,” said he, “you will all please be seated. The Court itself would like to be heard. The will of our deceased fellow-citizen, Lorin French, who was never more regretted by me than at this moment, or”—and the Court smiled deprecatingly—“the paper which purports to be his will, is presented here by our Brother Bruff. Now, unless some gentleman denies the death of Lorin French, it occurs to me that the reading of the paper offered as his will can but tend to our common enlightenment—”
The deep-voiced Lester, with his twenty-three objections, sustained by a “brief” which covered ninety pages of manuscript, arose.
“I have not yet finished,” said the Court. “It is apparent that many of the objections urged will be against the reading of the will. Such objections may be discussed more intelligently if the Court can be suffered to gain some knowledge of the contents of the paper offered, and I shall ask, gentlemen, that you suspend argument or motions while the clerk reads the will. It will then delight the Court to devote the remainder of the term to hearing arguments why the will ought never to have been read. Mr. Clerk, proceed, and I will send to jail for contempt any member of this bar who shall interrupt you until the reading shall be completed.”
There was silence in the crowded court room as the clerk opened and read the document:—
In the name of God, Amen, I, Lorin French, of San Francisco, California, being of sound and disposing mind and memory, but being assured by my physicians that the wound received by me must within a few days prove fatal, do make, publish, and declare this my last will and testament, revoking all wills previously made by me.
The free use of my hand enables me to make this will holographic, and this labor I undertake in order to more completely demonstrate to the court where it may be offered for probate, that it is altogether my own act, and that I am sane, clear of mind, and fully possessed of my own memory and judgment.
The near approach of the world into which my spirit is about to journey, brings, possibly, a clearer judgment, and I think now that if my decision to employ no strikers had not been communicated to the mob, I should have reconsidered such decision. However, my approaching death, which will incidentally result from that decision, afflicts me less than the fate of those who fell in the affray, for my own life was drawing to a close.
If the example I shall offer in attempting to adjust the relations of capital and labor shall be followed by others, it will result in advantage to the workers of this land, and great permanent good may thus grow from the bitter struggle which ended with the wound which will terminate my life on earth.
I am unmarried and childless, and my nearest living relatives are cousins of remote degrees, with whose names and places of residence I am scarcely acquainted. No relation of mine has any moral or rightful claim upon my estate, and the disposition I am about to make of my property will work injustice to no living creature.
I appoint as executor of this my last will and testament, my friend Louis Browning, to serve without bonds, and I direct that for his services as executor, and in lieu of all commissions, he receive the sum of $50,000 out of my estate.
I direct my said executor to forthwith pay to the widows, or next of kin, of each man slain in the late riot, the sum of $10,000, to each man permanently disabled by wounds received therein, the sum of $5,000, and to each man wounded but not permanently disabled, the sum of $1,000.
I direct my said executor to proceed as speedily as possible to prudently dispose of all my estate, and convert the same into money, to be paid over by him to the corporation hereinafter named.
I request that my said executor, Louis Browning, shall, in co-operation with the Governor of California, the Mayor of San Francisco, and my friends David Shelburn, Lawrence Slayter, George Morrow, and Francis Dalton, proceed forthwith to form a corporation under the laws of this State, to be entitled the ‘Lorin French Labor Aid Company,’ to which corporation, when organized, I direct that the proceeds of my estate be transferred, to be used by it in providing capital for the use of such co-operative and profit-sharing corporations as may, from time to time, be organized to avail themselves of its aid.
The Lorin French Labor Aid Company will not itself engage in any industrial enterprise, but will confine itself strictly to loaning money at three per cent per annum to such organizations of mechanics as may seek its assistance and comply with its rules. Those rules must require that one-fourth of the wages and all the profits of the members of the borrowing corporation shall be paid to the Lorin French Labor Aid Company, until the debt due the latter is discharged, and that the borrowing corporation shall be organized and conducted in accordance with certain conditions and rules.
My meaning may be made more clear by the following illustration:—
Suppose that five hundred men shall desire to establish a co-operative foundry. They will make a preliminary organization and apply to the officers of the Lorin French Labor Aid Company for the capital necessary to conduct the enterprise. Those officers will—after careful inquiry—ascertain that the buildings, land, machinery, and plant of such a foundry will cost $900,000, and that it will require a cash capital of $100,000 to carry the current business. They will purchase such a foundry, taking title in the Lorin French Labor Aid Company in trust, and will select a general manager, who will employ and discharge men, fix the rate of wages and hours of labor, and have full charge of the works. After the indebtedness of the Foundry Company to the Aid Company shall have been fully paid with interest, the members of the Foundry Company may elect their own general manager, but, until then, that officer shall be chosen by, and be subject to the control of, the directors of the Aid Company.
Each man employed in the works, from the general manager to the lowest-paid helper in the yard, must be a shareholder, the number of shares to be held by each being regulated by his wages. If a workman should die, or leave employment, either on his own motion or because of his being discharged, his shares would be turned over to his successor, who would be required to make good to the outgoing man or his widow or heirs whatever amount had been paid upon the shares, and the money for such payment might be advanced when necessary out of a fund for such purpose provided by the Foundry Company, the shares standing as security for the advance. No shares could be transferred except to a successor—employed in the foundry.
A portion, say one-fourth, of the shares of the corporation should be reserved for allotment to workmen whose employment might be required by the growth of the works, though it will be the object of the directors of the Lorin French Labor Aid Company to encourage the continued organization of new co-operative labor corporations rather than the enlargement of old ones. Yet such encouragement must be prudently granted, having reference to the natural growth of business and the demands of a healthy trade, and overproduction must not be stimulated, for it is my main purpose to help the laborer to rid himself of the payment of high interest and large commissions, to bring him as nearly as possible in direct communication with the consumer, to save him the waste of strikes, and the salaries of the brawlers who foment difficulties between laborers and their employers, to make him his own employer and his own capitalist, to encourage him in sobriety and thrift and the possession of such high manhood as of right belongs to citizenship of our republic.
The capital stock of such an iron-workers’ co-operation might be fixed at the sum borrowed from the Lorin French Labor Aid Company, say $1,000,000, divided into shares of the par value of $10 each.
Thus, five hundred men properly managed, working industriously, and allowing one-fourth of their wages and their entire profits to accumulate, might be able in five years to own a plant of the actual value of $1,000,000, with the good-will of a business worth as much more, and thereafter the worker might receive full wages and an additional income from dividends, which, if placed in endowment insurance, or in similar safe investments, would enable him to retire, if he wish, in fifteen years with an assured competence.
The $20,000,000 which will be received from the sale of my property, all of which I hereby give, devise, and bequeath to the Lorin French Labor Aid Company, ought to, and I doubt not will, be sufficient to establish co-operative iron foundries, sawmills, woolen factories, glass works, brick yards, and other industrial enterprises, in San Francisco, sufficient to provide remunerative employment for fifteen thousand men. The fund will be invested safely, for it will be based upon the security which is the creator and conservator of all property and property rights, industrious and intelligent labor. The accretions to the fund, even at the moderate rate of interest of three per cent per annum, will add, probably, a thousand workers each year to the number of its beneficiaries, while the repayment and re-investment in similar ways of the original fund, will add several thousand more each year.
The practical operation of the plans I have endeavored to outline will work no injustice to the owners of existing manufacturing establishments, for it will be in the interest of the workmen to purchase such plants and business at their value, rather than to build up new and rival establishments. It is true that some persons now making a profit off the labors of others will be compelled to enlist their capital and energies in other lines; but this, if a hardship, will not be an injustice, and individual convenience must be subservient to the general good.
“I think I have made clear the purposes to which I hereby devote the fortune I have accumulated by fifty years of toil and care—yet in the accumulation of which I have found great enjoyment. The details of my plans I must leave to those who now are, or who hereafter may be, charged with the execution of this trust. In the life upon which I am about to enter—for I have never so questioned the wisdom of the Originating and Ultimate Force of the Universe as to suppose that the death of this body of flesh will be the end of all conscious individual existence—in the life upon which I am about to enter, I hope to derive satisfaction from the fulfillment of the objects of this my last will and testament, to which I hereby affix my signature and seal, this thirtieth day of April, eighteen hundred and ninety-four.
LORIN FRENCH [SEAL].
We, William Jelly and Thompson Blakesly, declare that Lorin French, in our presence and on the thirtieth day of April, eighteen hundred and ninety-four, in the city of San Francisco, California, signed the foregoing document, which he then declared to each of us was his last will and testament, and we then, at his request and in his presence, and in the presence of each other, sign our names hereto as witnesses.
WILLIAM JELLY,
THOMPSON BLAKESLY.”
The voice of the clerk ceased, and for a few seconds there was a hush in the court room, which was broken by the harsh, cold tones of Counselor John Lyman.
“I submit to your Honor,” said he, “in behalf of the Public Administrator for whom I appear, and who asks that he be accorded administration of the estate of Lorin French. I submit that this so-called will, although rhetorically and otherwise a very interesting attempt at unpractical philanthropy, is—as a will—simply waste paper. In spirit and in letter it is an utter violation of two sections of the civil code of California. Section 1275 of that code provides that ‘corporations—except those formed for scientific, literary, or educational purposes—cannot take under a will, unless expressly authorized by statute.’ The proposed Lorin French Labor Aid Company is, in its plan, a corporation, neither scientific, literary, nor educational. Considered as a benevolent corporation, it is not now in existence, and is, of course, not authorized by statute to receive this, or any bequest—”
“How is it,” interrupted Mr. Bruff, “that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Sisters’ Hospital, and other corporations, have received bequests?”
“Simply because they have been expressly authorized by act of the Legislature to do so,” was the reply.
“Then if I wish to leave a sum of money to found and support an asylum for one-lunged lawyers, or one-eyed baseball umpires, I am unable to do so, am I?” said Bruff.
“You can go to Sacramento and have a law passed to enable your one-eyed and one-lunged corporations to take your bequest,” said Lyman.
“How much,” said Bruff, sarcastically, “would I probably be obliged to pay the statesmen for passing such a law?”
“My party is not in power,” rejoined Lyman. “I do not know the latest market quotations for votes in your caucus.”
“Order, gentlemen, order,” said his Honor, grimly.
“And suppose,” said Bruff, “the Legislature were not in session, would it be necessary that I wait a year or two before I could make a valid will, with the chance of dying in the meantime?”
“Possibly,” replied Lyman, “you might make a bequest to a corporation not empowered at the time of such bequest, to receive it, but which might subsequently be expressly authorized by statute to do so.”
“I have led my learned friend to the very point desired,” said Bruff. “Why, then, I ask him, can the corporation which the will of Lorin French proposes shall be created, not be authorized by the California Legislature, at its next session, to receive his bequest? I do not apprehend that the most docile Democratic lamb, or the most fearless Republican boodle hunter, would dare to refuse his vote for such a law.”
“But the corporation proposed by the late Lorin French,” said Lyman, “is not only unempowered to receive, it is not yet in existence as a corporation. It may never be created, and a bequest to either a natural or an artificial being, not even quickened with incipient life, not even conceived at the time of the bequest, may be questioned as of doubtful validity. But it is profitless to discuss these questions, because there is another section of the civil code which disposes completely of this so-called will. I refer to section number 1313. Thirteen is certainly an unlucky number for the workers of San Francisco. By that section it is provided that no will devising property for charitable or benevolent uses, shall be valid unless made at least thirty days before the death of the testator, and that in no event can a man bequeath more than one-third of his estate for such purpose, if he have natural heirs. It is also provided that all dispositions of property made contrary to the statute shall be void, and the property go to the residuary legatee, next of kin, or heir, according to law.”
“That was one of the wise laws that the sand-lot statesmen gave us,” said Bruff, sarcastically.
“Deed, and it wasn’t a sand-lot law at all,” interrupted a stalwart, red-bearded attorney with a slight Milesian accent. “It was passed away back in the seventies. Old Moriarty was down with typhoid fever, and Father Gallagher was pressin’ him every day to save his soul by lavin’ his millions to the Jesuit College and Hospital. But before the priest could get the old man in condition, Mike Moriarty slipped Nat Bronton—the king of the lobby—up to Sacramento with $20,000 rint money that Mike collected while his father was ill, and the bill was rushed through under suspinsion of the rules. Two days after the bill became a law, Father Gallagher coaxed and dhrove old Moriarty into signing a will that cut Mike off wid $50,000, and left $3,000,000 to the church, and the next week they buried the old man, with masses enough to put him through purgatory in an express train. They say that there was a scrappin’ match between Father Gallagher and Mike when the priest found that he had been outgeneraled, and Mike lost the top of his left ear, but he saved his father’s estate. Sure, the whole case is reported in the fortieth California, under the title of the Society of Jesus against Moriarty, and it decides this will of French’s sure enough.”
When the ripple of laughter which this interruption provoked had subsided, Mr. Lyman resumed:—
“My learned friend Casey is right, your Honor; the case he quoted does decide this one. If this will had been made more than thirty days before the death of Mr. French, it could at most have disposed of but one-third of his property. But it was made only two days before his death, and, under section 1313 of the code, is utterly void,” and the speaker resumed his seat.
The Court turned to the attorney who had offered the will for probate.
“What have you to say to this, Mr. Bruff?” he inquired. “All the claimants for the estate will doubtless agree with the position taken by the attorney for the public administrator. They are joined in interest in overturning the will. You alone defend the beneficent purposes of the dead man. What have you to say?”
“What can I say, your Honor?” said Bruff, bitterly. “It is another instance of a man conceited and obstinate enough to attempt making his own will. If my old friend French had called me in, I would have told him that courts and juries in California seldom allow a man to dispose of his own estate, if it be a large one, and he must give his savings away in his lifetime if he wishes to prevent his sixth cousins from rioting on them. I would have had Lorin French convey his vast property to trustees to carry out his plans, and have affected the transfer completely while he was yet alive. But he, great and simple soul, supposed, naturally enough, that he had a right to do as he pleased with his own, and that, being without near kindred, and no person having any claim upon him, he could help the poor with the money it had taken him half a century to accumulate. He was originally educated to the law, and, although he had been out of practice for thirty years, he knew how to formulate a will. But he was not aware of the ravages committed by a California Legislature among the time-honored principles of the common law. Mark the result of legislative folly and individual inadvertence. Twenty millions of dollars, which their owner proposed to devote to a grand and comprehensive experiment for adjusting the vexed relations of labor and capital, will now be consumed in court costs and witness fees, divided among a horde of attorneys, and finally scattered in selfish enjoyment, and in ways unuseful to man, all over the world from Australia to Elko. It’s the law, I suppose, and neither your Honor nor I can help it, but it’s an accursed shame, nevertheless.”
And Mr. Bruff, pale with excitement, resumed his seat.
“The Court can not only pardon your emphatic language, Brother Bruff,” said his Honor, “but indorses it. If I could discover any loophole which might be crawled through, or any way by which I could break down or climb over the legislative barrier, and validate the bequest of Lorin French, I would certainly do so. I will reserve for further consideration the question of the validity of the legacies to the wounded, and the families of those killed in the riot. I am inclined to think that portion of the will may be good, and so carry with it the right of Louis Browning to letters testamentary. For the present, however, I am reluctantly compelled to sustain the objection of the attorney for the public administrator, and refuse the will admission to probate. It is ordered accordingly. Mr. Clerk, note the exception of Mr. Bruff to my ruling. I will take my summer vacation now, and go fishing. I shall adjourn court for one month, and the further hearing of this case for two months. In the meantime, if the gentlemen who represent the various applicants for letters of administration, will leave their papers with the clerk, I will, upon my return, give them careful attention.”
“Does your Honor desire that I leave all my papers?” queried the sepulchral-voiced Lester.
“All,” replied his Honor and he paused for a moment, and glanced at the ninety pages of manuscript lying in front of counsel learned in the law, “all except your brief, Mr. Lester.”
The proceedings of the day in the superior court were reported fully, and commented upon freely, by the newspapers throughout the country, and a fortnight afterwards the proposed executor of the rejected will received the following letter:—
OFFICES OF DAVID MORNING, 39 BROADWAY, }
New York City, June 10, 1894. }
MR. LOUIS BROWNING, San Francisco, Cal.—My Dear Sir: Such a wise and noble plan as that of the late Lorin French ought not to lack accomplishment for want of money to execute it. If you, and the gentlemen named by him as your associates in the trust which he vainly endeavored to create, will organize such a corporation as he proposed, I will devote to it a sum equal to the value of his estate, which I understand to be, in round numbers, twenty millions of dollars.
Very truly yours, DAVID MORNING.