Parsons, stand in our museums, side by side with the tomes of Duns Scotus
and his fellow scholastics, as curious monuments of intellectual subtlety
devoted to subjects equally remote from the interests of modern men. Our judges
are simply widely informed, judicious, and discreet men of ripe years.
    I should not fail to speak of one important function of the minor judges,«
added Dr. Leete. »This is to adjudicate all cases where a private of the
industrial army makes a complaint of unfairness against an officer. All such
questions are heard and settled without appeal by a single judge, three judges
being required only in graver cases. The efficiency of industry requires the
strictest discipline in the army of labor, but the claim of the workman to just
and considerate treatment is backed by the whole power of the nation. The
officer commands and the private obeys, but no officer is so high that he would
dare display an overbearing manner toward a workman of the lowest class. As for
churlishness or rudeness by an official of any sort, in his relations to the
public, not one among minor offenses is more sure of a prompt penalty than this.
Not only justice but civility is enforced by our judges in all sorts of
intercourse. No value of service is accepted as a set-off to boorish or
offensive manners.«
    It occurred to me, as Dr. Leete was speaking, that in all his talk I had
heard much of the nation and nothing of the state governments. Had the
organization of the nation as an industrial unit done away with the states? I
asked.
    »Necessarily,« he replied. »The state governments would have interfered with
the control and discipline of the industrial army, which, of course, required to
be central and uniform. Even if the state governments had not become
inconvenient for other reasons, they were rendered superfluous by the prodigious
simplification in the task of government since your day. Almost the sole
function of the administration now is that of directing the industries of the
country. Most of the purposes for which governments formerly existed no longer
remain to be subserved. We have no army or navy, and no military organization.
We have no departments of state or treasury, no excise or revenue services, no
taxes or tax collectors. The only function proper of government, as known to
you, which still remains, is the judiciary and police system. I have already
explained to you how simple is our judicial system as compared with your huge
and complex machine. Of course the same absence of crime and temptation to it,
which make the duties of judges