36 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



contractors/' says the account of another case, which duplicates 

 almost literally the experience of the Parisian marchands de 

 I'eau* showing again how independent of time and space, of 

 feudal despotisms and despotic republics human nature is, " in- 

 duce journeymen plumbers to take out licenses so that they 

 can give the money to the journeymen and get the goods at 

 plumbers' prices. Too often they do not go through the for- 

 mality of having the money pass through the journeymen's 

 hands. " It is to be regretted," adds the account mournfully, 

 " that some supply houses sell to such so-called plumbers when 

 they know the circumstances." f 



As in the past, so to-day, the desperate attempt made to fence 

 off trades and professions with the barbed wire of legislation, 

 and to grant admission to the sacred circles of monopoly only to 

 those that meet official standards of excellence, has led to the 

 creation of absurd and arbitrary distinctions and provoked fierce 

 anger and contention. Already the opticians of Pennsylvania 

 distinguish between opticians, dioptricians, and ophthalmotri- 

 cians, f thus reminding one of the five kinds of hat makers in old 

 France, and when they come to get a law enacted for their pro- 

 tection, these distinctions will doubtless be perpetuated in the 

 statutes, to the instruction and amusement of some future Mon- 

 tesquieu. In the bill that the New York opticians have framed 

 the line is drawn with scrupulous care between " dispensing op- 

 ticians," who sell the products of the industrial skill of others, 

 and " refracting opticians," * who dispose of the products of their 

 own skill. But hardly had the measure been published before 

 there was a quarrel, or rather a series of quarrels, that rivaled 

 any that the regulations of the French hat makers stirred up. 

 There was, first, the fight between the regular physicians, who 

 claim, by virtue of their diplomas from medical colleges, the 

 right to prescribe for optical defects, and the oculists and opti- 

 cians, who want to establish a monopoly of this business. Next 

 came the fight between the oculists, who assert that they alone 

 have the requisite knowledge and skill to practice their profes- 

 sion, and the " refracting opticians," who insist that they are just 

 as competent to prescribe in certain cases. " When it is remem- 



* " II est vrais que 1'on employoit . . . bien de ruses pour eluder les lois rigoureuses 

 imposes au commerce par le hanse. Les contrebandiers trouvoient dans le corps meme des 

 marchands de I'eau des hommes assez complaisans pour e'tre les compagnons legaux des 

 speculateurs Strangers, et qui, dans le fait, se contentoient de preter leur nom, sans prendre 

 aucun part a la speculation. Lorsque cette fraude etoit decouvert, le prevot de Paris 

 condamnoit les marchands a 1'expulsion de la communaute de hanse." (Reglemens sur les 

 Arts et Metiers de Paris. Introduction. Par G.-B. Depping, p. xxxiii.) 



f Proceedings, Cleveland, 1896, p. 37. 



\ The Optical Journal, vol. ii, No. 8, p. 335. * Ibid., vol. ii, No. 10, pp. 391-393. 



