CO-OPERATION. 21 



But, aside from their legal franchise, corporations are com- 

 posed of individuals, a natural product, as such, they must 

 be reorulated in a natural manner. How can this be done save 

 by letting them alone? To interfere with their business is an 

 unwarranted violation of the right of private contract. Con- 

 gress cannot regulate nature. Efforts at regulating the rates 

 of interest have only tended to raise the price of money. So 

 of the hours of labor, they can no more be regulated by legisla. 

 tion, than the rising and the setting of the sun. Only the organ, 

 ization of industry can do that. Did every Trades Union in the 

 country to-morrow get ten hours pay for eight hours work, they 

 would relatively be no better off, for the corresponding in- 

 crease in the cost of production would leave their lot the same. 

 This regulating business is government's chief delight. Hav- 

 ing first created inequality of conditions, it further likes to 

 tinker at them, until like quack doctors, it lives off of the 

 diseases its own medicines make. 



Wherein then, upon last analysis, is the touchstone of 

 criminality, for instance, in a railroad corporation, justifying 

 governmental interference? It lies in the monopoly of the 

 roadbed. These are piiblic highways. But, do you ask us if 

 we expect to release this monopoly through a set of lawless 

 bar-room sprawlers on the banks of the Potomac? We answer 

 no. There are more natural, direct and potent agencies, 

 through which to regulate both Congress and the corporations. 



CODIFYING THE LAWS. 



If the State cannot rccfulate nature, can it make her laws? 

 What is a law? We speak of the laws of matter as uni- 

 form modes of motion. They are natural^ inherent, universal. 

 Thou shalt not injure thy neighbor is the law of justice It 

 is inherent and born of experience: had it come from outward 

 authority, history would not have presented the spectacle t)f all 

 progress being a rebellion against authority. If there is no 

 universality in the law of justice there can be no equality be- 

 fore it. The penalty also, for the violation of the natural law 

 of justice follows, as a natural consequence. 



Now note the operation and effect of all man-made lavs. 

 Since things are intrinsically right and wrong in themselves, 



