Wandering J. P.

One day last week stenographers and visitors in the office of Cook County Clerk Michael J. Flynn, who issues Chicago's marriage licenses, peered excitedly at a window across grimy North Clark Street where shone a bright new sign. Advertising the services of a justice of the peace, an office which Chicago discontinued in 1905, it puzzled the county clerk's assistants until reporters crossed the street to find behind the window, complacently waiting for business, David R. Mandell, this year elected justice of the peace in the proletarian Cook County suburb of Berwyn. A lawyer by profession, plump, 35-year-old Justice of the Peace Mandell announced that he had married only 41 couples in Berwyn in six months, saw no obstacle to making use of his administrative (but not judicial) authority elsewhere in the county. A look in the statute books corroborated his belief. When Chicago newspapers gleefully gave him free advertising by describing how a $10 bill would buy a $3 license, a $5 medical examination, and a $2 Mandell ceremony complete with phonograph music and a flowery certificate, authorities sharply cautioned Mr. Mandell against making any such combination offer, drew from Lawyer Mandell an indignant denial that he had done so. Only assurance Chicago had that Justice of the Peace Mandell would not be followed into the city by his 150 or so suburban colleagues was that by week's end he had garnered only four couples.

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