creates a power which may be abused, and results in a demand for laws putting upon capital new responsibilities in the interests of its employees. It above all points to the necessity of interstate and international labor legislation. With the aid of the International Association for Labor Legislation, a number of international treaties of great importance have been made, one of the most recent of which is a treaty between France and Great Britain, giving the workers of those countries reciprocal advantages in obtaining compensation for accidents.

5. Changes in consumers' wants create an artificial instability of business, which shows itself in alternating periods of activity and stagnation. The one tends to produce overexertion, the other unemployment, and each demands legislation.

It will be noticed that in each of these five cases the main purpose of the legislation in question is to prevent some injury to the human beings for whose sake economic progress exists and on whose efficiency its continuance depends. We should, therefore, add to the five elements of a dynamic society which have been enumerated a sixth, which has been comparatively neglected in the past, but which may prove in the future to be the most important of all. I refer to an improvement in the quality of the population itself. This is not altogether a dream. The average duration of the human life has within a century been decidedly lengthened in many of the leading countries of the world. In England and Wales, for instance, the average duration of life among males in 1838 to 1854 was 39 years, in 1891 to 1900 441%. In Sweden the average duration has increased from 391% in 1816 to 1840 to 50% in 1891 to 1900. Our statistics do not enable us to make general statements for the United States as a whole, but in several of the States the same tendency shows itself.*

Many diseases and many accidents are now recognized as clearly preventable. There is every reason to believe that by proper care human life can be lengthened, disease and accidents diminished, and the physical strength of the population improved; but, in order to bring about this most important element of progress, the State itself, which alone has an interest extending beyond that of the individual lifetime, must inter

* Fisher, "Report on National Vitality," 1909, pp. 18, 19.

vene in order to prevent well-recognized causes of retrogression and also to promote those elements which make for improvement.

In this process, mistakes are pretty sure to be made. Eugenics has not yet reached the position of an exact science. All legislation that is passed with good intentions does not produce the desired results. The point to be emphasized is that economic progress in itself involves inevitably in each of its elements some form of labor legislation. As long as change continues, we must expect that labor legislation will be necessary. If the laws of the Medes and Persians were immutable, it was because their economic life was stagnant. We should not forget, however, that the Oriental politicians who are responsible for introducing this tradition into literature invoked the immutability of the law on behalf of a brand-new measure of their own devising, the purpose of which was to check reform by casting the reformer into a den of lions. For according to the prophet Daniel, "All the presidents of the kingdom, the governors, and the princes, the counsellors, and the captains, have consulted together to establish a royal statute, and to make a firm decree, that whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days, save of thee, O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions. Now, O king, establish the decree, and sign the writing, that it be not changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not."* At the present day there are no more ardent advocates of the immutability of the law, none who more zealously urge that things be left alone, than those the value of whose property rights rests upon some comparatively recent law, such as a liberal charter or a high import duty.

This conception of labor legislation, if it could be generally entertained by our legislators and the public, would lead to certain important, practical results.

1. Labor legislation would be less in quantity and better in quality. A measure adopted for what seems an emergency is almost always hastily drawn and soon requires amendment. As soon as it is recognized that a certain type of legislation results from permanent conditions, more care will be bestowed upon it and the changes will be fewer.

* Book of Daniel, vi. 7, 8.

2. Legislation would also, on the whole, be more prompt. Certain general effects of industrial progress are well known by the experience of other States. These are often not corrected until they have become so flagrant that they are taken up by philanthropists or trades-unions, and corrective measures are then passed under pressure without due study. Legislation is often so afraid of crossing its bridges before it comes to them that it does not keep them in decent repair.

3. Laws would be more uniform if labor legislation were recognized as resulting from certain general economic conditions which are universal or nearly so. More care would be taken to secure harmonious action between different countries and different states in the same federation.

4. Labor laws would be less frequently the expression of class feeling. Many bills which excite prejudice on this ground would be recognized as being really in the general interest. The courts, too, might perhaps find it easier to distinguish between enactments which are really class legislation, and as such condemned by constitutional principles, and those laws which, while applying to certain definite groups, are in reality passed for the benefit of all.

5. The recognition of labor legislation as a permanent feature of our statutes would make it more consistent, because the very thought of adapting it to changes in economic conditions would force us to think more of those economic ideals which underlie subconsciously most social legislation, but are not always recognized or steadily followed.

Each great period of the world's history has had some such economic ideal, which, whether or not formulated in words, has become a part of the mores of the time and country and has guided the law in its main features. Under the Feudal System, for instance, society was divided into horizontal strata, based mainly on their relation to land and involving specific duties as well as rights. The Guild System dovetailed quite properly with this system, although strictly not a part of it, since under it the mechanics of the cities were classified and their places definitely determined, the crafts themselves being more or less hereditary. Whatever the merits or demerits of this system, it was one of order rather than one of freedom, one of conservatism rather than of progress.

The economic ideal of the United States is very different from this. It may not be easy to define it in a few words, but its most concise expression is perhaps found in that part of the preamble of the Federal Constitution which states, after enumerating certain political purposes, that its object is "to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." Our ideal is clearly not a caste system, nor even a hierarchy of functions such as existed under the Feudal System. It is a system of freedom which implies equality of opportunity for all. This does not mean anarchy, for it is a liberty which brings blessings. It is not the paper liberty of a phrase. It is, moreover, a liberty of the race, not of the individual. All this implies, therefore, a liberty so regulated as to prevent one individual or one group from abusing their liberty to the harm of others.

This policy, though unfortunately not always realized, is seen in many typical pieces of legislation, both Federal and State. The public land policy of the United States is based upon the idea of putting the land into the hands of small farmers, therefore preventing its monopolization by a few. The Homestead Exemption laws of our States interfere with freedom of contract in the interest of the family. The Federal Government introduced within the first few years of its existence a system of caring for seamen of the merchant marine in case of sickness by means of what would now be called compulsory sick insurance.* This remarkable piece of labor legislation, enacted in 1798, anticipated by nearly ninety years the introduction of general compulsory sick insurance by Germany, showing that even in those early days of weakness and decentralization the United States was ready to practise social politics, when the practicability and the necessity of it was apparent. If a few years earlier Alexander Hamilton advocated a protective tariff, partly on the ground that it would introduce the factory system and thus secure the employment of children "of a tender age," † this was not because of any desire to break down the health of the population, but simply because the evils of the factory system were not appreciated as were the dangers of the sailor's life.

* For a full history of the Marine Hospital Service the writer is indebted to a still unpublished monograph on the subject, written by Dr. A. M. Edwards for the Carnegie Institution. † Report on Manufactures, 1791.

We are fortunate in this country in having an ideal clearly expressed and pretty generally accepted, and it is this ideal which must give consistency to labor legislation. But it is a consistency of aim, not of words, that we must aim at. A navigator might seem vacillating to a landlubber who observed that he sailed now on the port tack and now on the starboard tack and constantly changed his helm. But through all of the apparent changes he is working steadily against the wind toward his port. Labor legislation must likewise adapt itself to the particular exigencies of the times, maintaining always, as its final purpose in the United States, to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. Its very prohibitions are in the interest of a greater liberty, just as the traffic regulations of a great city put restrictions upon the individual driver for a time in order to secure a freer circulation for the traffic as a whole.

The movement for more intelligent labor legislation is, as our association has often stated, but a part of the great movement for the conservation of our natural resources. But in the construction of the irrigation works which are already reclaiming so many square miles of land and turning bad lands into fertile farms the first step is the building of a dam. There are few persons now so short-sighted as to suppose that these dams are intended to prevent the water from reaching the arid plains. Every one knows perfectly well that they are the very first condition of an adequate water supply. Likewise some restrictive legislation as applied to labor is often the condition of real economic freedom. It means that man is at last learning to apply to himself those principles of domestication, preservation, and improvement which he applied to his live stock when he emerged from the hunting stage of existence.