ive scenes in the modern
theater is the court setting in Galsworthy's _Justice_. The lighting
is indirect and the spots of red and green lights at the judge's desk,
the corners of the jury-box and the shaded ones at the clerk's elbow,
give a remarkable impression of mysterious terror.

Whatever may be the cause, there exists a marked resentment against
the courts. Not only is there a complaint as to the cloying
technicalities of procedure, the long and fatal delays of the law, the
absurd forms and mannerisms of the trial, but underneath them all a
fundamental distrust of justice itself. The complaint is heard of the
inequality of justice. That there is a law for the poor man and
another law for the rich. The stage gives expression to the feeling,
and modern literature voices it. The high-priced millionaire escapes
and the low-browed pickpocket goes to prison.

Cases are cited where the rich woman returning from a debauch of
European shopping with a few thousand dollars' worth of pearls sewed
in the lining of her winter bonnet is only fined, whereas the little
milliner from the lower end of the city is sent to jail for trying to
smuggle in a new coat. The impressario of art collections is caught at
a gigantic scheme for defrauding the government of thousands of
dollars on imported pictures. He hobbles into court and on the ground
of ill health escapes a prison sentence and is merely fined, while the
little Italian fruit vender is summarily jailed for bringing in a few
dried mushrooms. The high financier who wrecks a railroad or a bank
serves a light prison term and emerges like a phoenix to buy new
steamboat lines or float new enterprises. But the peddler on the East
Side who sells a few dollars' worth of stale fish is punished to the
limit of the law.

The facts exist and to the popular mind seem unexplainable. There
undoubtedly must be a reason, and what it is, is not hard to find. It
seems one of the mysteries of judging and of justice, as though there
were an unwritten law in the back of the human mind in favor of
property rights. There is an explanation and not an inequality of
justice. The facts are not as they are popularly stated or supposed to
be. The public gets only a portion of the picture, and from an
enormous group of cases, a few contrasted ones are picked out for the
sake of the dramatic effect. The limelight of public notice is upon
them and the softer lights and shadows are omitted. The public does