The last matter, that of arrangement, order of printing, and form of title, is so directly connected with that of indexing that I shall treat the two things together.  Now, there are three different methods of arrangement, or lack of arrangement, to be found in printing the laws of our forty-six States and four Territories, both in the revisions and in the annual laws.  The revisions, however, are more apt to have a topical arrangement, and to be divided into chapters, with titles, each containing a special subject and arranged, either topically, or, in some States, even so intelligent otherwise as are Pennsylvania and New Jersey, arranged with the elementary stupidity of the alphabetical system.  I say, stupid; when, for instance, you have a chapter on “Corporations,” no one can tell whether the legislature or compilers are going to put it under “C” for corporations, under “I” for incorporations, or under “J” for joint-stock companies.  The alphabetical system of arrangement is the most contemptible of all, and should be relegated to a limbo at once.  The annual laws, of course, are much less likely to have any arrangement whatever.  Passed chronologically, they are more apt to follow in the order of their passage.

Now these systems as we find them are as follows:  in nearly all States public and private laws are lumped together, although in a few they are indexed separately.  Most of the States to-day, including all the “code” States, adopt the topical system of arrangement, as, indeed, must be the case in anything that might, by any possibility, be called a code, and even a general “revision” of the statutes will naturally fall into chapters covering certain subjects.  A few States, as I have said, cling to the crude alphabetical system, and quite a number have no discernible system whatever.  In some States the annual laws are arranged by number, in some by date of passage, and in some apparently according to the sweet will of the printer.  In those States which do not arrange them or entitle them by date of passage we have to depend on the crude and dangerous system of citation by page.  Acts of Congress are sometimes cited by date of passage, sometimes more formally by volume and number of the Statutes at Large, and more often than either, probably, by the popular name of the statute, such as the “Sherman Act,” the “Hepburn Act,” or the “Interstate Commerce Law.”

It seems to me we should recommend one system.  That for the codes or general revisions should certainly be topical.  That of the annual laws may either be topical or chronological, but the statutes, in whatever order they are printed, should be numbered and cited by number.  No alphabetical arrangement ever should be permitted.