The next important change arrived in a curious manner under the cry for what was then known as Social Justice—­a vague term which was then advocated by many so-called “reformers” and ignorantly opposed by the capitalist class, without any very clear understanding of what was meant.  So little was realized of the economic and efficiency values of insurance against chance, that the beginning of the movement was opposed.  The movement resulted in certain obvious changes which looking back upon them seemed inevitable and natural.  This was what was known as universal Employers’ Liability laws.  The principle soon extending itself to all classes of accidents, resulted in the passage of legislation which had been foreshadowed by the tremendous growth of Casualty and Accident Insurance companies.  Beginning at first with laws holding the employer liable for accident, and afterward resulting in the insurance of labor, it was gradually extended to accidents of every nature, including injury from travel on common carriers and the ordinary vicissitudes of life.

The result of State insurance against negligence and injuries of every kind was that all claims for injuries were adjusted by the State and the lawyers who lived by pursuing the neglect or misfortunes of others, gradually became extinct.  A certain distinguished and conspicuous type was known by the term “ambulance chasers”—­the exact derivation of the term not being now, in 1947, entirely clear but probably being related to some antiquated legal custom of succoring the wounded—­very soon disappeared.

The cases that arose from all commercial disputes became less numerous as the more candid and intelligent dealings of the economic world awoke better and more honest business standards.  But long before the disappearance of what was known as the commercial lawyer, there are evidences that the former courts of law, even before their entire abandonment, had fallen into a partial desuetude.  Apparently disputes of large magnitude never reached the courts.  And the legal standards enunciated by the courts were so entirely unrelated to the standards on which the actual commerce of the world was conducted, that resort was but little had to the arbitrament of the law of procedure in court.

The entire change of personal and domestic relations and the greater freedom from the institutionalism of semi-civilized communities, e.g., the abandonment of all restriction on divorce, naturally did away with the class of litigation that appeared in certain courts of law dealing with marital or personal grievances.

In regard to what were known as criminal lawyers and criminal courts, the different attitude which the public formerly had toward unfortunate sufferers makes the existence of such a class or such institutions almost unbelievable.  As it is now inconceivable that we should throw into unsanitary jails men and women who are mentally or socially diseased, so is it hard to realize that during the unintelligent period of which we are speaking, nay for many centuries, there existed people who lived upon their misfortunes.