Life — December 26, 1912 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

DECEMBER 26. 1912 “While there is Life there's Hope” Nor 1st" Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY West Thirty-first Street, New York J. A, Mirenent. Pres't, 7 English Offices, Cannon He NYONE who knows whether Mr. Brandeis ought to be invited into Mr. Wilson’s cabinet ought to tell and relieve the minds of a great many people who want to find Ever since election, when the ity that he might succeed Mr. Wickersham as Attorney-General be- gan to impend, Mr. Brandeis has been very much discussed. Folks from the Boston district, who already had the habit of discussing him, kept on, and a large company of others began. At the present stage most of those in- terested have got well past generals and are busy with details, going over Mr. Brandeis’ mental area with the most exact instruments procurable and examining it in cerebral sections. Now the instruments procurable for this purpose are mostly men who know, or think they know, Mr. Bran- deis, and have views about him; and because the views differ very much it is pretty hard to get a survey that can be accepted as reliable. As to part of the area there is agreement on the hnes, but as to quite a considerable back space some surveyors say this, and some that, and a good many admit that they can’t measure it. It is agreed that Mr. Brandeis is an excellent law- yer, that his mind is lucid and acute, that he knows business and can do it, and has done good strokes of it not only for himself but for the public. A common cause of fear of reformers who want to change the laws is that they don’t know what would be the effect on society and business of the changes they advocate. That can hardly be a basis of fear of Mr. Bran- A. Mitten, Sec'y and Treae, louse, Breams Bidgs., London, E. C- deis. His mind is powerful, his equipment is remarkable, his experi- ence is ample, and he ought to be as able as anyone to foresee effects. But that doesn’t console the folks who are afraid of him, because they suspect that effects that would look good to him would look bad to them. There comes in that unmeasured area in the hack of Mr. Brandeis’ head. He has come to have two professions. He is a lawyer and an altruist. As a law- yer he is fairly well understood, but as a professional altruist he stumps the estimators. F course altruists are always per: plexing, especially to the “ins, who can get along very well with things as they are. There is Mr. Hearst, a perennial mystery, and Mr. Roosevelt, whose self-abnegations in the public interest excite so much cavil, and Mr. Bryan, whose feeling for the people is so liable to puncture by per- sons who feel differently. And in Mr. Brandeis’ case the matter is compli- cated by the fact that he is a Jew. Common, Gentile altruists are hard enough to understand, but that Moses may be a tenant of that unmeasured area in the back of Mr. Brandeis’ head makes observers grope all the more. There is no religious prejudice about it. It is not generally known, and we never heard, whether Mr. Brandeis is a Jew in religion. The perplexity is about the Jewish mind when its oper- ations are complicated by altruism; how it works; whether it is construc- tive or merely combative; whether it is duly tempered with compunctions; whether it duly respects the status quo of a so-called Christian civilization and would use a decent moderation in improving it. Mr. Brandeis’ favorite clients nowadays are the “ outs,” those of us who seem to be getting less than our fair proportion of the pre- vailing prosperity; those of us who have to pay too high for life insur- ance, who cannot make good bargains with our employers and the corpora- tions that undertake to serve us. Women who worked too long hours, and children, have been his clients, much to their advantage; and working. men, and whole communities in their disputes with gas companies, railroads and administrators of such public util- ities. These are Christian-seeming services on Mr. Brandeis’ part, but to be more Christian than the Christians of one’s generation is to be in a rather worse fix, as regards public confidence, than if one lagged a little behind. Conservatives at least are understood, but altruistic, radical innovators scare people. R. BRANDEIS scares a good many. He lacks the confidence of the more solvent and respectable part of Boston in an impressive de-* gree. He is not of the Braham stock, has no Pilgrim or Puritan derivation, no association by descent with the West India trade, or leather, or wool, or cotton, but comes remotely from Palestine by way of Germany (prob- ably) and in his own person from Louisville, Kentucky, with all those disconcerting abilities, and all these succor-your-neighbor ideas in the back of his head, the scope and limits of which no Boston-born man can meas- ure. Some of his rivals in the profession of law say he does not play the game with proper regard for professional etiquette, and, though he has excel- lent clients, and staunch defenders, he has an extensive Boston reputation as 2 dangerous man. And yet he would apparently be a valuable man in a Democratic cabi- net. There are laws, especially the comicbookeon