312 JOSEPH W. FOLK 



abiding state of the union, and in yielding obedience to law 

 has set an example for other states to follow. 



There is in practically all the states, a statute requiring 

 dramshops to close on Sunday and election days. Yet in some 

 states it is openly and flagrantly violated. When one en- 

 forces this law because it is the law, the same cry is made 

 about blue laws and dead laws. It is a law in the interest of 

 good government to stop the enormous amount of crime that 

 comes out of the dramshop on Sunday and election days. 

 Those interested in having the law violated set up the specious 

 plea that it is an interference with personal liberty. It is no 

 more an interference with liberty than the law against gam- 

 bling or other laws in the nature of police regulations which 

 restrict the rights of one man when they interfere with the 

 rights of another. Absolute liberty to do as one pleases would 

 mean barbarism, for there would be no limit to the conduct of 

 an individual except his whims. The liberty of one would be 

 the unrestricted liberty of every other, and perpetual warfare 

 would result as the wants and desires of men come in conflict, 

 and every man would have equal right to take or hold what 

 his strength or cunning could secure to him. Security can 

 come only from fixed rules, which the people, as they become 

 familiar with them, will habitually respect. Restrictions 

 which seem to the individual to be hardships are but the will 

 of the majority of the people operating through legislative acts. 

 Where rights are defined and regulated by laws to which re- 

 spect and obedience are given, any particular law is deprived 

 of all seeming hardship. If each man were allowed to say 

 what laws are good and what laws are bad, and to ignore laws 

 he considered bad, there would be no laws at all. The dram- 

 shop keeper who violates the dramshop law, calls loudly for 

 the enforcement of the law against the man who breaks the 

 larceny statute by robbing his cash drawer. The trust mag- 

 nate looks with abhorrence upon the burglar, yet thinks he has 

 aright to break the statute against combinations and monop- 

 olies. The burglar detests the law breaking of the trusts and 

 thinks they should observe the law, but considers the law 

 against house breaking as an interference with his personal 

 liberty. So it goes; men observe the laws they like and think 



