122 The Bulletin. 



Almighty has so fixed up affairs in this world that no man can go through 

 it without litigation? If j'ou die, your estate has to be settled. If yon sell, 

 you have litigation. Now, the best plan is not to try to get around the 

 inevitable, but to fix your litigation so that whatever happens you will be 

 secure. 



Let us understand that you go into court and ask that the title of your land 

 be settled. There are hundreds of instances in which the title will go through 

 like a train, no counterclaim being set up. I take it that I am confronted 

 with more than one man not entirely satisfied about the boundaries of his 

 land. He is resting to-night on an insecure foundation. He does not know 

 at what time a suit will be lodged against him. But if he goes into the court 

 and has that settled — as any fair and sensible man will do — when the court 

 gets through he will know what he has and know where his boundaries are; 

 and instead of making for uneasiness and increasing litigation, it will put 

 an end to litigation, because you have a decree of the court. The thing is 

 fixed and final. The thing itself is litigation, but there are all sorts of litiga- 

 tion. I take it that if one of you were to die, leaving five sons and five hun- 

 dred acres of land, I take it that no obloquy would attach to those young men 

 if they went into court and tried to get the land divided. That is done every 

 day in the year, and there is no taint or suspicion of wrong and no difficulty 

 about it. The litigation under the Torrens system takes the uncertainties and 

 the claims and counterclaims which tend to make unneighborly difficulties and 

 create litigation, find removes them at one time. It will increase litigation 

 very much for ten years, but after that there will be nothing to litigate about. 

 Now, I take it that the man afraid to go through the difficulties of settling all 

 the little things likely to disturb him, who says that he will let well enough 

 alone, that he will not meet these little difficulties, this man is not the man 

 to make a farmer, or a lawyer, or anything else. But the man for me says, 

 "These uncertain things exist, these difiiculties are about me, and I will go 

 out like a man to meet them, and I will either whip them or be whiiiped." 

 The Torrens system gives you an opportunity to settle these questions. Of 

 course, if you have any land to which you are not entitled, the Torrens 

 system will take it away from you, and I am glad it will. I do not think 

 anything of a man who will keep land not belonging to him. 



The woman's part in the land is absolutely unchanged under the Torrens 

 system. If she owns the land, her husband must sign the deed in order to 

 convey it. If the husband owns the land, she must sign the deed and have her 

 privy examination taken. They are spreading it all around that the Torrens 

 system will upset our system of conveyance. My friends, it does not change 

 the tenure. It simply guarantees your title and enables you to convey con- 

 veniently and without the inconvenience and cost and worry of that investiga- 

 tion of the title. It enables you to take your certificate of ownership to a 

 prospective purchaser and say: "I want to sell you my land. Here is my 

 certificate, duly signed by my wife and myself. Take it and go to the court- 

 house and have it registered in your name." Why should we not have a 

 system to enable landowners to dispose of their property as conveniently and 

 readily as stock owners can dispose of theirs? It is simply a movement, as 

 I said in the start, to give the conveyance of real estate somewhat of the 

 character of the assignment of personal property. 



So much for these objections. I have mentioned the matter of the conveni- 

 ence of conveyance and the facilitation of credit. I understand a great deal 

 from my limited experience about the system farmers have of borrowing 

 money. I believe we are on the edge of a new day in North Carolina with 

 respect to the agricultural class. I do not say it for flattery, but my judg- 

 ment is that the most progressive calling and the most progressive class in 

 North Carolina is the agricultural class. You are applying your progressive- 

 ness not only to your system of cultivation, but to your system of finance, and 

 in the evitable course of the progress of the farmers of North Carolina in 

 intelligence they are going to resist the system by which the money lender 

 lives upon them at some enormous rate of interest. I am speaking. I take it. 

 to a higher class of farmers than some. I know it as a matter of fact that 

 there is no respectable or responsible class of people in the world that has to 

 pay the price for credit that farmers do. Now, the Torrens system comes 



