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PROCEEDINGS

OF THE

Thirty-second Annual Meeting of the Bar Association

of Tennessee

HELD AT

Memphis, Tennessee, June 25, 26, 1913

J

The thirty-second annual meeting of the Bar Association of Tennessee was called to order in the Goodwyn Institute at Memphis, Tennessee, at 10:30 o'clock on the morning of June 25th, 1913, by President Albert W. Biggs, of Memphis.

The President:-Gentlemen, the Association will come to order. It affords me very great pleasure to present Dr. A. B. Curry, the Pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of this city, who will open the meeting with prayer. We will stand. Dr. Curry.

Dr. Curry:-Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we adore Thee as the Almighty Maker of the heavens and the earth, the sea and all the things therein, who has made the planets and the stars and the sun and the flowers and the dew-drops, and the mortal spirit of man, and who has placed them all under law, physical law, moral and spiritual law, perfect and beautiful law. We humbly beseech Thee to look down with Thy favored grace upon these men of the law as they meet in their annual assembly.

We thank Thee, Oh God, for our country and for its splendid and blessed institutions. We thank Thee especially this morning for the judicial department of our government, our courts of justice, the great bulwark of our liberties and our freedom. We thank Thee for them, and now ask each man to

have great and far-reaching influence in the successes and usefulness of this department of our government here meeting together in their annual meeting. Oh, Lord, God of our fathers and our God, look down we pray Thee in favor and in blessing upon them. Bless each individual in his own private labors at home and prosper and bless them as they are in assembly gathered. Bless their presiding officer, and all the officers of the Association and each individual member, and grant that this annual meeting, Oh Lord, may be blessed indeed with the promotion of just legislation, and we do humbly beseech Thee that when we shall all stand at Thy Bar in the last great day of assizes that we may all have the services of that great and righteous advocate whose pleadings are always prevailing with the great Judge of all.

Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

Mr. Biggs:-Gentlemen, it affords me very great pleasure to present to you one of the leading lawyers of Tennessee, of whom the Memphis bar is now and has long been proud, who in behalf of the bar of Memphis and the City of Memphis will extend to you a welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Metcalf.

Mr. President and Brethren of the Bar:—

If I were called upon to welcome delegates attending a commercial, industrial or other like convention, it could not be deemed an ungracious welcome, if I were to adopt the exhilarating vernacular of the booster, and tell them in the outset that we have the greatest city south of Mason and Dixon's line, soon to rival leading cities north of it-a line, I may add, long ago obliterated politically, but always to remain, as the lovable and lamented Robert L. Taylor has said, the dividing line between cold bread and hot biscuit.

I could, without the imputation of inhospitality, exhibit to them the latest folder of the Business Men's Club, with

its slogan title, "Bigger, Busier, Better Memphis," a club with a membership of over two thousand, representing every line of business, trade and industry, from adding machines to wood works.

Warming up, I could tell them that we will soon have a municipal auditorium, so magnificent in its architecture and vast in its proportions, that even the Shriners, instead of declining an invitation will clamorously seek admission.

Increasing in fervor, I could in the exhuberance of unrestrained enthusiasm, tell them our trade and commerce has grown so marvelously fast and great that another mammoth bridge is being built across the mighty Mississippi, to avoid constant congestion in transportation.

In a bashful strain like this, if my nerve and vocabulary should hold out, I could continue, and with glowing zeal, portray to them the unparallelled attractions and probabilities, present and prospective, of our city-a veritable Duluth of Proctor Knott fame-until the delegates themselves, if they should believe one tithe of what I should say, would telegraph home to their managers to close their business houses and factories, and would wire their wives to pack up, and all come at once to Memphis, before every avenue of activity should be congested and closed, and their entry barred for want of room.

Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Jackson and other beautiful and flourishing cities, and towns, too numerous to mention, scattered broadcast as municipal pearls throughout the State, whence this splendid assemblage of lawyers have come, could extend to such convention like welcome, replete with praise of their own resources and accomplishments, without breach of propriety between host and guest.

But, Mr. President, we are not today greeting delegates to conventions of the kind, useful and needful as they are, in the advancement of material prosperity, and in the dissemination of knowledge of profit and loss, where business methods, facilities, and localities are weighed in business scales, and goods, wares, and merchandise, figuratively speaking, are displayed for the attraction of investment comers and customers. Other loftier and not lucrative objects are our aim.

Annually, we meet to cultivate professional ethics and social intercourse. More than that, we meet to consider and commend measures for the curtailment of litigation; the abridgement of the law's delay; reduction of expenses to litigants; uniformity of laws; simplicity in their administration, and other needed and wholesome enactments. What nobler and more unselfish task could engage the time and attention of good citizenship?

I would that laymen, who are always welcome, would largely attend our meetings, to the end that they might know and appreciate our endeavors, and by their voice and vote, co-operate with us in their legislative adoption, whether at biennial, or perennial sessions.

Although not germane to an address of welcome, I cannot refrain from spontaneously uttering an ardent wish that they would actively and persistently aid us in our efforts, especially to amend, or to make anew, our old and infirm Constitution, to meet the requirements of new conditions and environment, and to keep abreast with other States which have noted and heeded the needs of a live and thrifty age.

With these high purposes prompting us, we have gathered at Memphis today, from every part of the State, at our worthy President's bidding, who names both the time and place of our annual meeting, and in the selection of which, the individual membership has no voting voice. And so it is, we are cordially your involuntary host, while you are voluntary our most acceptable, though technically, uninvited guests-a most delightful and unique relation, wherein we are all hosts, and all are guests of each other for common pleasure and common good, and wherein good fellowship is the sentiment supreme, and loyalty to law and order, and the promotion of both, are duties sublime.

I apprehend that this meeting, presided over as it will be, by one of our most gracious members-a learned and leading lawyer-supported as he is, by an active and earnest central council, and with a program of rare attraction in subjects, and in speakers, all eminent, will indeed be a most enjoyable symposium of legal learning-enhanced in pleasure by a paper to be read, scholarly in style, thought and research, as I am sure it will be even though not by a lawyer.

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