PERSONAL LIBERTY, 437 



■wiiicli is required to direct the processes of labor and capital and 

 the time that is required for the sequence of the several processes 

 of production. 



Among these five factors, land, labor, capital, mental energy, 

 and time, there is but one in which all men must share alike. All 

 others are variable. One only is equal and constant, and that 

 is time. 



The hours of the day number twenty-four. Whether a man 

 be rich or poor, whether well endowed with mental energy or not, 

 the one opportunity, the one element of property, which all must 

 share alike, is time. Time is a common factor, and yet it is also a 

 separate factor, an element of individual property, with which 

 every man may claim to deal according to his own will so far as 

 he may not impair the rights of others to deal with their share 

 of time at their own will. 



It follows that any legal .restrictions upon the free use of time 

 impair personal liberty more than almost any other interference 

 with the freedom of men that can be conceived. Such restrictions 

 create inequality in that which in its nature must be shared by 

 all alike. 



Yet, step by step, and session by session, the Legislatures of 

 almost every State are enacting statutes restricting the use of 

 time, which, when enforced, create monopolies, establish privi- 

 leged classes and inflict disabilities. Under pretense of police 

 ordinances or under the pretext of maintaining the public welfare 

 these acts deprive great bodies of citizens of their right of free 

 contract and of the free disposal of their own time according to 

 their own will, even in lawful and in innocuous pursuits in the 

 conduct of which no harm can arise to any other person, although 

 the man himself who chooses to do so may overwork himself. 



These restrictions have been carried to such an extent as to 

 have perverted the very moral sense of great numbers of work- 

 men. Many combinations and associations have made demands 

 upon the Legislature to limit adult men and women in the use of 

 their own time who do not wish to be limited by legal restrictions 

 imposed both upon the workman and the employer. The attempt 

 has been made to put a brand or mark of disgrace upon other 

 workmen who choose to maintain their own personal liberty by 

 calling men " scabs " or " rats " and other opprobrious terms, who 

 control their own time and maintain their right to free contract. 

 Resort has even been had in very many cases to force, in this 

 futile attempt to substitute the despotism of democracy through 

 the misuse or abuse of the power of the majority for the despot- 

 ism of the kings and of the privileged classes whose rule we have 

 thrown off. 



It matters not that all such attempts must fail because the 



