I9I4.] PSYCHOLOGY OF JtRORS AND JURIES. 309 



I am especially considering the juror of the more intelligent and 

 selected class. As a rule, he admits that jury service, in spite of its 

 drawbacks, is educationally profitable and often interesting. He 

 means that his duty shall be conscientiously performed. He is 

 sensitive about sitting in judgment upon his fellows — for he knows 

 his own liability to appear at any time as plaintifif or as defendant. 



Yet withal, he is asked to swim with a stone on his neck, to be 

 agile in a straight-jacket, to be patiently complaisant in duress — 

 a mental Blondin in hobbles. 



His bristles begin to rise, when, in his own home, the summons 

 is served with a threat. The " law " first greets him with flashing 

 eye and teeth uncovered. The more conscientious and honorable 

 the man the more ofifensive appears the attitude of his legalized 

 captor. 



In the United States courts this summons may compel the victim 

 to attend court fifty or a hundred miles away. He may live on a 

 branch road where train service is such that he could not go and 

 come every day. Even if he could, he would be out of pocket since 

 the fee is insufficient to pay the passage. This condition may re- 

 quire the juror to be absent for a week at a time from his business, 

 or from a sick wife, virtually without compensation and really with- 

 out assurance of release in emergency. How can a man's judgment 

 be at its best under such circumstances? 



In any case, whether he lives far or near, the average man on 

 receiving notification that he is wanted is, for the moment at least, 

 disconcerted or timorous. Before him rises the giant of business 

 demands, home dependents, personal physical disabilities or patho- 

 logical possibilties, a sense of being penalized, of loss of freedom 

 without cause, a danger of " contempt " through sheer ignorance and 

 inexperience, a vision of all-night incarceration with uncongenial 

 strangers, perhaps sickness in his family unwaited upon and beyond 

 communication with him. I doubt whether any jury panel is ever 

 drawn entirely free from some or all of these mental perturbations 

 in some or all of the individuals. They are, however, especially 

 true of the first-time juror. To add to his discomfiture his neighbors 

 either pity his plight or make a jest of it or advise his making an 

 efifort to get excused. I have talked with two classes of drawn 



