slavery; and even on that question the view favorable to slavery was in defence of that which was deemed a property right. The opinions of the private citizen and of the publicist were equally well founded. The government was not deemed the creator of value in the country's currency, nor was it looked upon as the legitimate source of the individual's wealth. Bryanism, embracing as it does all the heresies and dangers of Socialism and Communism, could not have been a possible growth at any time within the first three-quarters century of the republic. The most ardent Jacobin at the founding of the Democratic party, filled with the ideas of the French Revolutionist, would have rejected such a combination of evils and false theories of government as it embodies, as foreign to the underlying foundations of the republic and wholly undemocratic. No Federalist would have tolerated so great an extension of paternalism or believed it to be compatible with the welfare of the country. And yet, no thoughtful student of affairs can fail to appreciate how much of the strength and following which it exhibited a year ago is due to the belief, created in a great mass of the people through a perversion of legislative power, that legislation is the true corrective for all the forms of misery from which the nation suffers. We have swung from the extreme of individualism to the extreme of paternalism, to the detriment of all classes of the people and of all sections of the country. Out of the ill-considered and unnecessary legislative acts, designed to grant the citizen relief in matters which are beyond the duty of the government, have been born more than one issue of a destructive character. It has been an easy thing for the charlatan and demagogue to point to acts of paternalism done in behalf of one interest, and to ask if such acts should not reach to all. There is no consistent answer to the argument that if bounties and benefits are granted through law to one they should be given to all. The only manner in which the question as to the bestowal of such benefits can be met successfully is by denying that it rests within the power of law and equity to bestow them upon any. With the barrier once broken down, there is no escape from the justice of the demand of the Socialist, Populist, and free silver advocate. The demand of each is consistent only with a paternal view of government, and with the exercise of paternal rights. It has no lodgment in any governmental system where the most important factor in

attaining success is individual effort. It cannot rest in a system which is declared to be based upon an established government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."

As against the legislation favored by a true interpretation of the duties of the law-making powers, we have had in recent years statutory enactments without limit, and of every kind and character. They have been designed to create wealth, banish complaints, increase the wage of labor, abolish points of dispute between employer and employee, regulate trade and commerce, banking and currency, make the waste places fruitful, render odious combined capital and curtail the powers of corporations. The most insignificant subjects have not been too trivial to be legislated upon, while the most important have received constant attention. And with what results? The wealth created by such means has been so quickly obtained, and so unevenly distributed, as in turn to be made the object of legislative attack and solicitude. On every side complaints and protests against existing adverse conditions are to be heard. The wage of the laborer is still subject to other laws than statutory ones, and instead of increasing in amount with added legislation, continues to fall. Each year there are yet witnessed disputes between employer and employee, and the country is far from being free of strikes and lockouts. The harmonious relations which should exist between capital and labor are still wanting, despite the labor laws and arbitration boards existent in every State. The channels of trade and commerce, dominated by legislative decrees, still fail to give evidence of an increasing and continuing prosperity. The promise of that prosperity has more than once been made only to fail of fruition. In any proper view of the case it must continue to fall short of public expectations, so long as it rests dependent in the greatest measure upon the acts of any legislative body. The record is yet wanting in the history of our material prosperity where there has been as the result of law any greatly extended period of substantial progress. The reverse is more often witnessed. Such prosperity has in the end invariably culminated in panics, long continued business depression, and bankruptcy.

Turning to questions of banking and currency it is found that the people are still protesting against a banking system so inadequate as to fail to meet the needs of trade and commerce, and a currency system sc ill-devised that it makes impossible a

proper transacting of the daily volume of the country's business. All this remains, though the legislative body of the country has more than once enacted statutes designed to improve both. Antitrust legislation and anti-corporation acts have yielded no results, except to cause a suspicion, upon the part of the general public, that possibly back of more than one legislative attack upon corporate capital in the alleged interests of the people, are demagogy and blackmail. Legislation upon labor problems and corporate rights clearly unconstitutional in its provisions has not infrequently found place in the acts of many legislative bodies solely to meet a temporary political emergency; and when such legislation has been made the subject of judicial investigation and annulled by judicial decision, the courts have been assailed as in league with the rich, as against the well-being of the poor. Much of the feeling embodied in political platforms and uttered on the stump, directed against the judiciary of the land, has found its inception in paternal legislation. Whenever the courts, and it is to be said to their credit they have seldom failed to meet the duty confronting them, have declared against such legislation as traversing legitimate legislative functions, those responsible for unconstitutional enactments have been quick to accuse them of a want of fidelity to their trust and of a failure to appreciate the abuses which such legislation, it is claimed, would

correct.

The seriousness of the situation wrought by over-legislation is many sided. It has made statutory enactment, notwithstanding prohibitory provisions in the constitution of a majority of the States against special legislation, distinctively special legislation. If in many instances it appears to be general in its object and scope, it is so in appearance only. The thing to be accomplished is wholly individual, and for individual benefit. The legislative bodies of the country and the legislators themselves have suffered in reputation and standing from their zeal in this direction. The general public cannot believe that everyone engaged in business, whether that business is of large or small proportions, is an enemy to the people and a despoiler of the country. Fortunately, a point has not yet been reached when the accumulation of capital and the earning of a substantial income is looked upon by the majority of the people as a crime against society. It is also doubtful whether all virtue and disinterested patriotism rest in those

who constitute the enacting powers. If, as has been argued, a notable decline has come about in the moral tone and statesmanlike ability of the men who are elected to legislative places, not the least reason for it rests in the loss of respect for the legislative office itself-a thing made possible only through rendering it by such a course ineffectual as an agency for public good. But these results are of small consequence as compared with the immeasurably greater evil of that threatened deadening of individual effort in the business world through the force of paternalistic legislation. The evidences accumulate with each successive session of every legislative body of a lack of the citizen's reliance on self, and in that self-abnegation he is given encouragement by too willing legislators. In the end, however, he must fall back in the struggle for existence upon his own energy, ability, integrity, prudence, and judgment. The danger springs from the discontent bred when at last it is found that the government is powerless to aid and the legislation relied upon, instead of benefiting, has proven to be a hindrance through its attempting to regulate things beyond its province. If the country is to be free from the forces that threaten its political and financial integrity, the first and greatest reform to be entered upon should be the eliminating of unnecessary and unwise legislation. It should be undertaken in order that legislation may no longer menace all lines of business, but be restricted to those matters which are proper objects of legislative control. And concurrently with such reform, the citizen must know and act upon the lesson drawn by Blanqui from the hazardous attempts of the French revolutionist: "That the finest laws are not sufficient to secure to each citizen a prosperous condition if he does not co-operate with them by his labor and his morality. All the wealth and felicity which the philanthropy of legislation could decree was decreed; and the people learned that public wealth followed other laws than those of force and tyranny. It forced governments and individuals to see the elements of future greatness elsewhere than in legislative programmes."

JAMES H. ECKELS.

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

POOLING RAILROAD EARNINGS.

THE pooling of railroad earnings under the control of the government has been discussed for some years in our newspapers, reviews, and in Congress.

In the far West and South the proposition to legalize pools is generally bitterly opposed by the people, on the ground that pooling would enable the transportation companies to "fatten upon the substance of the toiling masses," apparently ignorant of the fact that hundreds of thousands of our citizens find employment on our railroads, and that three-quarters of the earnings of our transportation system are disbursed in compensation of railroad employees.

Never to my knowledge has this subject been presented in its most important aspect. Usually, the articles treating of this matter either are in advocacy of the proposition solely in the interests of the railroad corporations or in hot abuse of them. The essential point of the question is apparently not understood, or if it is understood it is utterly ignored.

Those most intimately concerned in the pooling of railroad earnings are the people, especially the farmer, the miner, and the artisan, and not the transportation lines.

There has been much said about "railroad wars" as factors causing or preventing business prosperity in the United States. War or peace among our railroads actually has cut relatively a trifling figure in our general business relations compared with other overshadowing trade conditions. Railroad wars are unmitigated evils to the people, irrespective of what may be the results to the railroads. It is time, however, we understood that needless and wasteful as are these wars, there are other conditions more disastrous to our commercial and industrial interests.

The opposition to railroad pooling is, perhaps, as strong in the South as in any portion of our country. The facts to demonstrate the mistake we make in opposing pools may, therefore, be taken with advantage from wellknown commercial and industrial conditions in the South.

Six or seven years ago the Southern planter marketed his cotton for ten cents per pound. To-day he must sell for about seven and one-half cents. This fall in price of cotton was not caused in any way by the railroads. We have had no railroad wars throughout the cotton regions to affect favorably or otherwise the staple product of the South and Southwest. What, then, has caused this terrible crash in cotton values? Competition. But not competition within our borders. During our Civil War the British started cotton culture in India with destructive results to our nation. During the past quar