672 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a far more powerful bureaucracy, and has led to much greater 

 social and political demoralization. 



The spirit of proscription as well as restriction, so conspicuous 

 in Federal legislation since the civil war, is also potent in State 

 legislation. The Federal Constitution has, of course, made it impos- 

 sible to establish tariff barriers between the States. But the exac- 

 tion of licenses of commercial travelers and other checks to inter- 

 State commerce show no lack of will or effort to evade the provision. 

 More successful schemes to prevent foreign competition have been 

 the laws that exclude non-residents from oyster beds and salmon 

 fisheries. Other legislation, equally repugnant to American free- 

 dom, forbids to citizens or corporations of other States the ownership 

 and operation of railroads. The feeling against the residents of for- 

 eign countries is still more irrational and hostile. The immigration 

 offices established in many States during the period of enlightenment 

 and tolerance have, I believe, with but a single exception, all been 

 abolished. Not only have some of the States forbidden the employ- 

 ment of aliens on public works, but they have forbidden them the 

 ownership of lands within their borders. So rampant has the spirit 

 of intolerance become within the past two years that their exclusion 

 from all other forms of investment has been suggested. Yet we con- 

 tinue to boast of American freedom and enlightenment! 



Without tracing the apostacy of American democracy into the 

 narrower but not poorer field of municipal legislation, with its 

 countless ordinances from the regulation of the use of nursing- 

 bottles to the suppression of department stores, let us inquire into 

 the fruits of these exhaustive labors of philanthropists and states- 

 men. Let us ask whether the one have been commensurate with 

 the other. Have the American people been made moral and hu- 

 mane? While more insistent upon their own rights, have they 

 become more considerate of the rights of others? Can it be said, 

 in a word, that social, political, and industrial life to-day indicates 

 a higher civilization than before the war? 



Not to one of these questions can an affirmative answer be given. 

 At no time since the adoption of the Constitution has there been 

 such widespread and well-founded complaint about the greed of 

 capital, the tyranny and brutality of labor, the shocking prevalence 

 of crime, especially lynchings, and the corruption and degradation 

 of politics with the unprecedented growth of the boss system. A 

 legislature does not sit, be it State or national, that is not besieged 

 by men supposed to represent more than any other class the intelli- 

 gence and morality of the community for favors of every kind 

 valuable franchises, exemptions from taxation, or other special 

 privileges. The chief argument in behalf of socialism has come to 



