who are the peers in learning, character and high professional standing and attainments of those who gave lustre to the Bar of the past. The evil practices which I have here pointed out can only be corrected by cultivating and maintaining a healthy ethical sentiment among the members of the Bar of our State, and no agency can contribute so well or so largely to that desirable end as the South Carolina Bar Association.

Sixth. In the last place, what of the future? The evolution that has produced such a tremendous concentration of wealth, with the many complex problems arising therefrom, is bound to bring about changes, affecting the legai profession and the practice of the law, that no human mind can foresee, or human knowledge forecast.

Look for a moment at some facts and figures.

In 1900, the wealth of this nation was estimated to be, in round figures, $94,000,000,000. Sereno S. Pratt, in a recent thoughtful article entitled, "Who owns the United States," says: "One-twelfth of the estimated wealth of the United States is represented at the meeting of the Board of Directors of the United States Steel Corporation when they are all present." There are twenty-four of these Directors, and they represent more than two hundred other companies or corporations, and the companies operate nearly one-half of the railroad mileage of the United States.

Again, he says: "How immense has been the development of corporations, which are the first stage in the evolution of concentrated wealth, is indicated by the fact that while in 1868 the total amount of stocks and bonds admitted to dealings in the New York Stock Exchange was only about $3,000,000,000 par value, the amount in 1903 is six times that sum-a sum, if it represented real values-equal to nearly one-fifth of the wealth of the United States." must be remembered that a few men control this immense wealth, and such control has been acquired by corporate combinations. "Corporations are combined into trusts, rail

It

roads are consolidated into systems, banks are linked together in chains of financial institutions, and these trusts, systems and chains are in turn united by communities of interest, and these communities of interest are subject to certain spheres of influence, which are discovered to center in a handful of great financiers, whose character, courage and skill, and their personal wealth, have lifted them into positions of supreme leadership."

Among those mentioned who exercise this "supreme leadership" are Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, whose influence dominate corporations capitalized at over six and a quarter billions of dollars; and Mr. John D. Rockefeller, whose influence directs corporations capitalized at nearly a billion and six hundred millions of dollars. In summing up the results, this writer says: "This concentration has its undoubted advantages. It is an economic evolution of tremendous power. It has, among other causes, enabled this country in the past twenty years to develop more wealth than in all the preceding years since the discovery of America. It may be argued, however, that this concentration is too high a price to pay even for benefits such as these. Concentration of the control of wealth certainly presents problems, the gravity of which it is impossible to conceal or evade. How to preserve the advantages of concentration, and at the same time to get rid of its evils; how to prevent the waste of competition without destroying it; how to secure stability and strength without loss of individual liberty; how to permit the railroads to combine, and at the same time to provide for government regulation of rates; how to make possible the achievement of great enterprises without resort to methods involving the violation of law and the corruption of legislatures; how to encourage promotion without the evils of over-capitalization and over-speculation; how to secure comprehensive publicity without disclosure of proper trade secrets-these form the one large problem before us that overshadows and includes all others."

Another writer, Frank G. Carpenter, very recently said: "In the past, the United States has been great through its individual citizen. It has been the land of all others where the single man could stand alone and fight his way through any sphere to fame and fortune. This condition is rapidly changing. We are doing things in the large. Men work in bands and dollars in millions. The land is one of golden giants, of mighty masses of organized capital and herculean armies of organized labor. First, look at our combinations of capital. They surpass in their accumulation the wildest dreams of a Croesus, an Aladdin or a Monte Cristo. It is not long since the millionaires of the United States could be counted on your fingers and toes. Now they are numbered by the thousands, and we have individuals worth more than the aggregate wealth of some of the smaller European States. *** We now have, in addition to the billion dollar steel trust, which, by the way, is a little shrunken at the waist, and in addition to the gigantic Pennsylvania Railroad, about 850 industrial combinations, which command, all told, $15,000,000,000. We have 213 industrial trusts capitalized at $7,000,000,000, and more than 5,000 other corporations. These trusts are swallowing their smaller competitors. They are branching out to include all business of profit, and in many cases are binding the hands of industry with trade. regulations. Indeed, we are fast becoming a nation of poolmakers, rate-fixers and profit-sharers, and new questions of enormous importance stare us in the face."

In the solution of the mighty problems that now and in the future will confront us, resulting from the wonderful changes, combinations and evolutions already effected, or now in process of development, we are assured by the experience and the history of the past that the legal profession in this country will take a leading and decisive part. The nature of their profession necessarily tends to make them leaders of men and moulders of public opinion. The Bar of our own State, in the solution of these great questions, will not and

cannot afford to be recreant to its duty along this line. On the contrary, in all that tends to promote the highest ideals of professional life, civic virtue, lofty patriotism and wise statesmanship, I am persuaded that the members of the Bar of our State, as they have always been in the past, so always will be in the future, found in the fore-front. To them, therefore, is committed the sacred trust and upon them is devolved the imperative duty and solemn responsibility to maintain the professional purity, the lofty ideals, the gracious courtesy, and the untarnished honor of our illustrious predecessors, which in the past shed such undimmed lustre upon the Bench and Bar of South Carolina, and crowned them with imperishable glory.

MEMORIALS

LEWIS W. SIMKINS.

Lewis Wardlaw Simkins, a member of the Bar of Laurens, died on the 12th of February, 1903, of pneumonia, at the age of forty-nine. He was the son of Colonel John Simkins, who was killed in the service of the Confederacy on Sullivan's Island. He was the grand-son of Arthur Simkins, and the great-grand-son of Eldred Simkins, of Edgefield, names historic in South Carolina's annals. He was also a lineal descendant of General Elijah Clarke, the celebrated Whig partisan officer of Georgia in the Revolutionary War. His mother was Rosa Wardlaw, daughter of the distinguished Judge David Lewis Wardlaw, of Abbeville. Much of Lewis Simkins's boyhood was spent in the home of Judge Wardlaw, of whom he was a favorite grand-son, and whose influence helped largely in shaping his character. In his early youth he was a clerk in one of the banks of Columbia, where he acquired a thorough knowledge of business. For two years he was a student of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va., and maintained a fine standing in the University life, though the necessities which confronted so many young Southerners immediately after the war, prevented him from completing his course.

He studied law in Newberry, was admitted to practice in 1877, and entered into partnership with the late Thomas Moorman, of Newberry, his brother-in-law, with whom he practiced under the firm name of Moorman & Simkins for a number of years; both in Newberry and in Laurens. He took up his residence in Laurens in 1883, and rapidly built up a good practice. In 1891 he formed a 'partnership with the late Colonel Beaufort W. Ball, and this association continued until the failing health of Col. Ball required its disso