224 Urdahl—The Present Fee System in the United States. 
ually have little trouble in securing enough money to pay a. 
lawyer’s fee. On the other hand, the court money would be no 
benefit to the really misused wife of a poor drunkard, as the 
husband would have nothing from which the court could collect 
the fee. 
If it is necessary to assist the wife in any particular way, 
then give her the alimony and not a lawyer’s fee, which inures 
to the benefit of the attorney. If we examine divorce statistics 
for the last twenty years, we find a very marked increase in the 
number from year to year, and a very marked increase in the 
number granted for apparently trivial causes. There must be 
some reason for this. People are not naturally more quarrel¬ 
some and overbearing toward each other now than formerly. It 
is asserted by those who have studied this question that the 
number of divorces increases in the proportion that the means 
of obtaining them are facilitated. If this is true, it must be 
evident to any observer that, after due weight has been given 
to other causes, there is at least some relation between the sys¬ 
tem of court money and the divorce problem of to-day. 
F. THE FEE-SYSTEM AND POLITICAL CORRUPTION. 
Very few people are so ignorant of politics as not to have 
heard, from rumor at least, of public offices the emoluments of 
which are so great as to enrich the occupant in a single year. 
No public office in the gift of the people is of such importance 
as to yield a regular legal salary of $100,000, even though it 
required the highest grade of ability which the country can 
furnish. This amount has been received more than once, how¬ 
ever, by officers whose duties and abilities were of a compara¬ 
tively low order. The position of sheriff in a densely populated 
county, or that of recorder or collector, are offices which do not 
require a very high grade of attainments; and yet these purely 
clerical officers have often been paid a higher salary than the 
President of the United States. 1 Some of these are reported to 
1 The legislative commission investigating state expenses in Connecticut 
makes public the statement that for the year ending July 1, 1897, the 
clerk of the superior court of New Haven county received $9,690 in fees, 
over all expenses of office including assistant clerks. Senator Converse 
