The President is going to appoint Lurton. [Footnote:  To the Supreme Bench.] He should have said so when he made up his mind to do it, which was immediately after Peckham’s death.  He would have saved himself an immense amount of trouble.  Lurton seems to have been very hostile to the Interstate Commerce Commission, and is too old, but otherwise I hear nothing said against him.  I really would like to see Bowers put on the bench very much.  He has made a very favorable impression here, and is a clear lawyer, a very strong man, and in sympathy with Federal control that’s real.

By the way, I had a talk the other day with Attorney General Wickersham regarding the treatment of criminals, and I believe you can secure through him the initiation of an enlightened policy in this matter.  He told me that he was going to make some recommendations in his report, and perhaps the President may deal with the matter slightly in his message.  Wickersham is a thoroughly modern proposition, and as he has charge of all the penitentiaries, and his recommendations, with relation to parole and such things, absolutely go with the President, I believe you could do more good in an hour’s talk with him than you could effect in a year otherwise.  If you could run down, during the holiday vacation, I would bring you two together for a talk on this matter, and you, also, might take up the very live question with the President of cutting off red-tape in the courts.  Give my love to Mrs. Wigmore, and tell her, too, that we would be most delighted to see her here.  Faithfully yours,

FRANKLIN K. LANE

On December 9,1909, President Taft reappointed Franklin K. Lane as a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

TO MRS. FRANKLIN K. LANE

En route to California, Monday, March [1910]

...  I have spent a rather pleasant day reading, and looking at this great desert of New Mexico and Arizona.  No one on board that I know or care to know, but the big sky and my books keep me busy.  Do you remember that picture in the Corcoran Gallery with a wee line of land at the bottom and a great high reach of blue sky above, covering nine-tenths of the canvas?  I have thought of it often to-day—­“the high, irrepressible sky.”  It is moonlight and the rare air gives physical tone, so that I feel a bit more like myself, as was, than is ordinary. ...

I have thought of a lecture to-day and you must keep this letter as a reminder and make me do it one of these days:  The problems of railroad regulation.  The traffic manager as A statesman:  The unearned increment of our railroads.

And another:  The need of A world bank:  International and independent financial authority, which shall fix standards of value, based on no one metal or commodity, but on a great number of staples.