labouring rank of life whose position is not that of slaves and drudges; precisely because they cannot easily be compelled to work and earn wages in factories against their will. For improving the condition of women, it should, on the contrary, be an object to give them the readiest access to independent industrial employment, instead of closing, either entirely or partially, that which is already open to them."16

A scientific examination of the facts of the case fails altogether to bear out Mill's position. The suffrage and the fullest measure of right over property and persons have failed to place women on a footing of economic quality with men. The reason for her economic disabilities are as profound as her sex differences and must be reckoned with in any realistic legislation. This is the verdict of the world's civilization.

But until recently economists were inclined to limit regulation of labor conditions and especially hours of toil to children, young persons, and women, leaving adult men "free", so it was said, to make their own contracts. But experience has shown conclusively that while adult males as a rule are in a far better position in the labor contract than the classes just mentioned, unregulated contract does not always conduce to freedom and fair opportunity-"the square deal"—but frequently means bondage and degradation. A realistic political economy must recognize the facts of the actual world, and does so.

Adverse conditions are often so strong for classes of adult males that well-considered and strongly enforced legislation is necessary to secure freedom from the bondage that would result from them if uncontrolled by social regulation; for here, as so generally, the purpose of statute law is to assist men to gain control over the

1 Mill: Principles of Political Economy, Book V, Ch. XI, Sec. 9, p. 579, People's Ed.

cruel and tyrannical action of uncontrolled nature and society.

We must not take the view of the state as something external, stepping in and interfering with liberty. The action that we have in mind is rather the result of the coöperative efforts of men to determine the conditions of toil and to enlarge their free sphere of economic action.

The well-being of the adult male is as precious to the State as that of women, young persons, and children; and indeed the welfare of these latter classes is normally intertwined inextricably with his strength, vigor, and prosperity. And for adult males, hours of toil on railways, the world over, must be limited in their own behalf as well as in behalf of the general traveling public in order to promote safety. This position is practically conceded in every civilized country.

It has also been necessary to regulate hours of toil of street-car employees. Before limited by law the regular working time of this class of workers in Baltimore was over seventeen hours a day and they were deprived of liberty in any possible realistic and positive sense of the term, while at the same time the women and children of their families suffered by the cruel "free play of economic forces" to use that familiar but unphilosophical and inexact phrase.

Bakers are a class of workers who, for a variety of reasons, are unable to secure hours of labor and conditions of toil, wholesome for themselves and for others. They are short-lived and unhealthy; and, if modern scientific investigations have made any one thing clear, it is that bad sanitary conditions and excessive hours of labor, bringing bad health to toilers, are a menace to the public. health. We are here dealing with actual conditions,

which it is the function of Departments of Labor, as a branch of the executive department of government so to work up and present to the judiciary that judicial notice must be taken of them. Instead of confining themselves so largely to gathering miscellaneous statistics too often, after all, almost meaningless - labor bureaus should have it as one of their main functions to investigate, exhaustively and scientifically, labor questions before the legislatures and courts; and the law should make their findings primâ facie evidence in all cases, following in this particular the Wisconsin Railway Rate Commission Law in the case of a just and reasonable rate.

It would seem to be a weakness in the New York Bakers Case, entitled "Joseph Lochner Plaintiff in Error vs. the People of the State of New York", that the facts had not been adequately investigated by another branch of the government and that in consequence they were not presented to the Court as they should have been. The case resulted in one of the familiar "five to four" decisions. In other words, by a majority of one, the Supreme Court of the United States, on April 17, 1906, held that it was not a proper exercise of police power to restrict the hours of labor of bakers to ten a day and that consequently the New York statute was unconstitutional, because in contravention of the "liberty of the individual protected by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution", according to which "no State can deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law". And liberty to make contracts is held to be part of that liberty thus guaranteed as well as a property right. It is admitted that under the exercise of the police power in the interests of the general welfare, contract may be limited and regulated. The majority

opinion declares this New York statute "not within any fair meaning of the term a health law". Here the majority are clearly wrong, for they have the facts against them. But also, as Mr. Justice Holmes says in his dissenting opinion, this decision embodies an economic theory and an outlived and outworn economic theorythe economic individualism of the eighteenth century. Mr. Justice Peckham, the writer of the majority opinion, says, "Statutes of the nature of these under review, limiting the hours in which grown and intelligent men may labor to earn their living, are mere meddlesome interferences with the rights of the individual". This is totally unscientific and is a position that, because untrue, must be abandoned: as is shown by the minority-here, as so often in history, right.17

Let no one say that economics or any other branch of science may not criticise in our free land the judiciary. We know no infallible authority in the state, and to blame science for pointing out errors of courts is craven and

"It is pointed out in the majority opinion that the New York law had no emergency clause. It may be that there is a real weakness, although even this cannot be admitted without an examination of the technical nature of the case. The words of the decision are worth quoting in this connection:

"Among the later cases where the State law has been upheld by this court is that of Holden v. Hardy (169 U. S. 366). A provision in the act of the legislature of Utah was there under consideration, the act limiting the employment of workmen in all underground mines or workings, to eight hours per day, 'except in cases of emergency, where life or property is in imminent danger'. It also limited the hours of labor in smelting and other institutions for the reduction or refining of ores or metals to eight hours per day, except in like cases of emergency. The act was held to be a valid exercise of the police powers of the State.

"It will be observed that, even with regard to that class of labor, the Utah statute provided for cases of emergency wherein the provisions of the statute would not apply. The statute now before this court has no emergency clause in it, and, if the statute is valid, there are no circumstances and no emergencies under which the slightest violation of the provisions of the act would be innocent. There is nothing in Holden v. Hardy which covers the case now before us."

unmanly, contrary to the spirit of the founders of the Republic; and lacking in true respect to the Courts, because it implies that the Courts in turn are lacking in manliness and true Americanism.

But even Mr. Justice Holmes in his trenchant criticism of the majority decision, after saying truly "The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Herbert Spencer's Social Statistics", implies in one place that while the statute may be an interference with liberty, it is an interference with liberty justified by beneficent results. The true position is that this statute represents a struggle for real, substantial liberty of which the bakers were deprived by the majority decision, retaining merely its empty shell; and indeed the learned justice himself says that he thinks the word liberty in the Fourteenth Amendment perverted "when it is held to prevent the natural outcome of a dominant opinion."

Science, then, can draw no arbitrary line between labor legislation for adults and labor legislation for women and children; but cases must be judged, as they arise, on their merits. But this need not preclude a painstaking and careful search for general principles, although supposed general principles have so often misled us in the past.

The International Association for Labor Legislation, of which our Association is the national section, draws no fixed line between legislation for adult males and labor legislation for women and children; and this represents the opinion of the best experts of the world-those who conservatively, and as agents of governments, are investigating labor questions.

But what has been said must not be taken to mean that economists endorse all proposals for labor legislation. Many-nay, most-such proposals they would with practical unanimity hold to be impracticable and visionary,