Court Fees. 
189 
in the legislative reforms which are attempted, not only within 
the Union, but also in other countries. If the reforms outlined 
above should at all meet the expectation of the reformers, it 
will only be a question of time until the movement will spread 
over the entire West and even overcome the inertia and conser¬ 
vatism of many Eastern commonwealths. 1 But the reform is 
bound to come in course of time, even if it is not accomplished 
by such legislation at a single stroke. It requires no great 
power of observation to see that a change is gradually going on 
in everyone of the states in the Northwest. One official after 
another is transferred from the fee to the salaried list. Scarcely 
a session of a legislature closes without having accomplished, 
one or more changes in this respect. 
C. FEDERAL COURT FEES. 
Scarcely any of the states employing the fee system have as 
yet required the officers to give any strict account of the total 
amounts received as fees. Even if the new system is introduced, 
it becomes next to impossible to obtain any figures which will 
show in dollars and cents the total gain or loss due to the one 
system or the other. It is quite different with the Federal 
officials, and more especialy those connected with the Federal 
courts. These were required comparatively early to give a 
complete account of every fee received. We have thus full and 
reliable statistics of the amounts collected as fees in the various 
courts for a long series of years. These figures show that the 
cost of maintaining the United States courts has for a number 
of years been increasing at the rate of over a million dollars a 
year. On May 28, 1896, Congress passed an act which changed 
most of the officials connected with the Federal courts from the 
fee to the salary system of compensation. The result is, that 
the total expenses under the new system for the current year 
1897, according to the estimates made by the Attorney General, 
1 It may be of interest to note that the original drafts of two of these 
laws were not made in the West by any “ sage bush ” legislators, but are 
the product of the best legal talent of the East. The statute of one state 
is taken from a revised code which was laid before the New York legisla¬ 
ture; and after being rejected by that body, it was taken up and passed in 
the West. 
