As to indexing we should urge upon State legislatures, secretaries of State, and official draftsmen (when we get any) that the very excellent system contained in the New York Year Book of Legislation should be adopted for all volumes of State laws.  It is as bad for the index to be too big as to be too little, and it does not follow that the good draftsman is a good indexer.  The index to our Revised Laws of Massachusetts is contained in one large separate volume of 570 double-column pages.  To look for a statute in the index is just about as bad as to look for it in the revision itself.  The most important point of all is the proper choice of subject titles.  Laws should be indexed under the general subject or branch of the science of jurisprudence, or the subject-matter to which they belong, not too technically and not too much according to mere logic.  For example, any lawyer or any student of civics who wished to learn about the labor laws of a State, whether, for instance, it had a nine-hour law or not, would look in the index under the head of “Labor.” Labor has become, for all our minds, the general head under which that great and important mass of legislation concerning the relation of all employers and employees, and the condition and treatment of mechanical or other labor, naturally falls.  But if you search in our elaborate index of Massachusetts for the head of “Labor” you will not find it.  If you look under “Employment of Labor” you will find it, but you cannot be certain that you will find all of it, and you will find it under so many heads that it would take you quite ten or fifteen minutes to read through and find out whether there is an “hours-of-labor” law or not.  On the other hand, purely technical matters, such as “Abatement” are usually well indexed, because their names are what we call “terms of art,” under which any lawyer would look.

But, after all, it does not so much matter what system we adopt as long as it is the same system.  At present I know of nothing better than the forty heads contained in the “Principal Headings” of the New York State Library Index, though I should like to change the names of a few.  For instance, “Combinations or Monopolies” is not the head to which the lawyer would naturally look for statutes against Trusts.  The word “trust” has become a term of art.  If not put under “Trusts” it should be under “Restraint of trade” or “Monopolies,” but the word “combination” is neither old nor new, legal nor popular.  A combination is lawful.  If unlawful, it is not a combination, but a conspiracy.