596 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



by the community of business with timidity which in some instances 

 has amounted to trepidation." The State legislatures are hardly 

 better. No great industry has any assurance that it will not find 

 itself threatened with a violent and ruinous assault in some bill that 

 a rapacious politician or misguided philanthropist has introduced. 

 In New York the attacks of these modern brigands have become so 

 frequent and so serious that many of the larger corporations have 

 had to take refuge in adjacent States,* where they can enjoy greater, 

 if not complete immunity. In a less degree the same is true of the 

 minor legislatures — town, county, and municipal. Ordinances for 

 pavements or sewers or in concession of valuable privileges keep the 

 taxpayers in a state of constant anxiety. At the same time vast 

 harm comes from the neglect of more important matters. The time 

 of legislators is spent in intriguing and wrangling, and the millions 

 of dollars that the sessions cost are as completely destroyed as though 

 burned by invaders. 



Though seldom or never recognized, politics has the same struc- 

 tural effect upon society as war. The militant forces of the one, like 

 the militant forces of the other, tend to the destruction of social mo- 

 bility and the creation of social rigidity, making further social evolu- 

 tion difficult or impossible. There is a repression of the spirit of in- 

 dividual initiative, which calls into existence just such institutions 

 as may be required at any moment and permits them to pass away as 

 soon as they have served their purpose. There is an encouragement 

 of the class and parasitic spirit, which produces institutions based 

 upon artificial distinctions, and, like those in China, so tenacious of 

 life as to defy either reform or abolition. To provide place and pelf 

 for followers, political leaders, aided by the misdirected labors of 

 social reformers, favor constantly the extension of the sphere of gov- 

 ernment in every direction. In New York, for example, during the 

 past eighteen years, thirty-six additions to State offices and commis- 

 sions have been made. Simultaneously, the expenditures on their 

 account have grown from less than four thousand dollars a year to 

 nearly seven million. This feudal tendency toward the bureaucracy 

 that exists in France and Germany, and in every country cursed with 

 the social structure produced by war, is not only the same in the other 

 States, but in the Federal Government as well. Its latest manifesta- 

 tion is the amazing extension of the powers of the interstate com- 

 merce commission demanded in the Cullom bill, and the proposed 

 establishment of a department of commerce to promote trade with 

 foreign countries. As in New York, there has been an enormous in- 

 crease in Federal expenditures. In the agricultural department it 



* It has been suggested by J. Novicow that, by a competition of this kind among na- 

 tions, an improvement in legislation might be forced upon them. 



