Something about our neighbour: Justice Johnson

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Part of The American Chamber of Commerce Journal

Title: Something about our neighbour: Justice Johnson
Language: English
Year: 1928
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Fulltext: 14 THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL April, 1928 weapon which kills anopheles minimus. It is Paris green, prepared by formula, in a mixture of 1 to 100 with ordinary road dust. How to prepare it and how to apply it can be learned in ten minutes by any alert individual. Nor does it require a lot of the mixture, which is quite inexpensive. A surprisingly small lot is lethal to the enemy. Over in a laboratory room of the Bureau of Science the Rockefeller Foundation men were cultivating the larvae of anopheles minimus. In a corner of the room, cut off by high partitions so that no hint of the powder got into the air, Paris green was prepared. Though it was the corner farthest away from the larvae, the larvae consistently died; deadly to the anopheles minimus, the atmosphere of the room was otherwise entirely innocuous. In practical use no mechanism is required to apply the mix ture. Men don rubber boots, take the trail upstream, and dust the mixture lightly about where a little experience teaches them the enemy is sure to be lurking. IV That is about all there is to the story of pre vention, which signifies malarial control without necessarily quininization. Quinine is palliative, Something About Our Neighbor: Justice Johnson This paper is designed to speed Justice and Mrs. Johnson on a pleasant voyage and visit to the United States and a safe and early return to the Philippines. They left Manila late in March for the homeland, to spend the summer there and to return to the islands as early as possible after the court vacation. They fre quently make such trips, in fact they make them almost every year, saving when Justice Johnson happens to be the vacation-duty justice; and certainly they have probably never foregone them on election years, since Republicanism is deep in the Johnsonian blood and a look-in on the national convention has held peculiar pleas ures for Justice Johnson from the days of his early boyhood. He was bred and born in the presidential state, you see, Ohio; he remembers the opening remark of his uncle, Judge West—it is a family of judges, indeed, on both sides—placing in nomination for the presidency James G. Blaine in 1884: “I was bred and born a Republican. Had I not been, I should seek the earliest opportunity to be born again!” Ingersoll followed, with his famous Plumed Knight address. It can’t be denied, politics is a serious factor in life in Ohio. Then, of course, Justice Johnson has known many of the presidents personally, and most of them intimately, from Garfield and Hayes down to Harding and Coolidge. It is one errand of his, when in the United States, to confer with the president. His opinions on the Philippines are naturally valuable to the White House. Elias Finley Johnson was a professor of law in the University of Michigan when President McKinley faced the problem of establishing courts in the Philippines, and McKinley gave the first appointment to a Philippine judgeship to John son. The appointment was dated October 7, 1900, “to the judiciary of the Philippine Islands.” The courts were not yet organized, this did not occur until July 1901; but Johnson had been in Manila since March of that year, and when the judiciary act went into effect he went into the provinces to organize courts of first instance. He organized these courts in Zambales, La Union, Pangasinan, Benguet, and Ilocos Sur. Insurrection still disturbed the peace of the provinces. Johnson was often accompanied by a military escort. He found buildings for the courts, bought tools and lumber and made with his own hands some of the necessary furniture. On July 14, 1903, he was appointed judge of the court of first instance. His plans at that time, with two years of pioneer judicial work here, were to go home; he and Mrs. Johnson, with their children, were on their way home when the news reached them that President Roosevelt had appointed Judge Johnson an associate justice of the Philippine supreme court. Con tinuing the voyage, they visited only briefly in not preventive. There is probably not a single industrial or agricultural project in the Philippines which cannot take effective advantage of this seemingly simple knowledge, the quintescence of prolonged and costly research in the islands and throughout the whole world for generations. No one now, facing a malarial problem, need wait upon either the government or his neighbors, unless the latter closely hem him in. Novaliches has been made a training station for personnel; in all there are five control stations in the islands, the work developing to greater effectiveness all the time. Any plantation manager, any project engineer, can acquire the essential technique of malarial control by making a few visits to the Novaliches training station, first making arrangements at health-service headquarters. More, the health service and the Rockefeller Foundation experts will respond to requests for assistance. They will survey your malarial problem, map out a program, aid in putting it into effect, and provide continuous supervision. The day has dawned in these islands when the devastating, often disastrous, human and mate rial losses from malaria can be eliminated. Hon. E. Finley Johnson America and then returned to the new duties in Manila. These have been Justice Johnson’s duties ever since; often they have made him the acting chief justice of the court, when the post was vacant or when the incumbent was ill, as during the greater part of the years 1924 and 1925. His membership in the court covers a period of 25 years, the heart of a long and vigorous life. Born at Van Wert, Ohio, June 24, 1861, he was not quite 40 years old when he came to Manila in 1901, but he is now nearing his 67th birthday. His ripened and most productive years have been given to the islands. And never stintedly given, either. ’For many years the Johnsons have resided in their bayshore house in Pasay, where the dawn of every new morning finds the justice, who weighs 285 pounds, taking his constitutional in the surf. He swims expertly, with the zest of a boy, and only the most threatening typhoons keep him out of the water. But at 7 o’clock he is in his office, where his day, begun at that hour, may be prolonged until sundown. There are but nine justices, including the chief justice; there is no intermediate court of appeals, so that the work thrown on the court is prodigious in volume and incessant in its demands. In a single year Justice Johnson has written more than 260 decisions, more than the whole number of decisions written in a year by the entire bench of many state supreme courts. Naturally, many of Justice Johnson’s decisions are leading cases in the jurisprudence of the islands. He has also penned dissents which have afforded him as much satisfaction in the final denouement as the better known and more vital majority decisions he has written. During the first year he was on the court, the court was reversed 11 times by the Supreme Court of the United States, and from seven of those 11 deci sions Justice Johnson had dissented. Latterly the court has seldom been reversed; appeals are only by writ of certiorari; the power of the court is great, its independence surpassing that of intermediate courts in the United States. But though there be honor enough, little of the fame of it travels across the Pacific, and it is, for the American members of the court, peculiar ly restricted honor. In the beginning the rule was established that the chief justice of the court should be a Filipino; this rule has long operated, since Justice Johnson became the senior member of the court in point of service, to prevent his appointment to the chief justiceship in which he had hopes of retiring. The appointment was widely recommended when the latest vacancy occurred, but President Coolidge chose to adhere to the rule. (It should be added, on the other side, that the court comprises four Filipinos and five Americans; the rule dates with the time when Filipino lawyers were little, acquainted with American procedure and juris prudence.) Justice Johnson has served with 33 associates on the court; they have come and gone, and few are left of the original bench of Who will deny that great personal sacrifices were involved, in all probability, in Justice Johnson’s resolve to throw his lot definitely in with the Philippines? It can hardly be doubt ed that he would have gone to the bench in the United States, or that politics would have claim ed him for special honors; he was well known in Michigan, influentially connected in Ohio. His mother, Margaret Gillespie, was a relative of James G. Blaine. An uncle, who had been a judge, who was blind and had acquired the popular sobriquet of “the blind orator of Ohio,” had been governor of the state. His father was Judge Abel Johnson. He himself was equipped with an excellent education and long experience in the law, and he had the physical vigor and taste for active politics. Surely Ohio would long ago have singled him out for high reward. An inadequate sketch of our neighbor, Justice Johnson, folks, of him whose memorial addresses alone have exalted the annals of Manila: selection (may be made of those on McKinley, Roosevelt, Arellano, Mapa, Torres (these three all members of the court, and the first two chief justices), Harding, Wood, Crossfield. INFORMATION FOR INVESTORS Expert, confidential reports made on Philippine projects ENGINEERING, MINING, AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY, LUMBER, ETC. Hydroelectric projects OTHER COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES BRYAN, LANDON CO. Cebu, P. I. Cable address: “YPIL,” Cebu. IN RESPONDING TO ADVERTISEMENTS PLEASE MENTION THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE JOURNAL