SCIENTIFIC ASSISTANCE IN LAW-MAKING 
By JOHN BURTON PHILLIPS 
Among the conspicuous features in modern progress none is more 
important than specialization. This is the era of specialists. In all 
lines of activity success comes to the man who has had the benefit of 
special training and has attained excellence in his line of work. Division 
of labor, which has created specialists, can be employed to some extent 
in allindustries. It has been adopted more generally in industrial affairs 
than in government, yet there is a pronounced tendency to secure the 
services of specialists in the administration of the government of the 
United States. The report of the Industrial Commission was very largely 
the work of men specially trained in the subjects investigated by that 
body. ‘This is what gives it its great authority and impartial tone. 
One of the largest fields for the effective service of the specialist is in 
the assistance he can render to the men charged with making a state’s 
or nation’s laws. With the increase in the activities of government, both 
state and national, the difficulties that beset the lawmaker tend greatly 
to increase. Formerly the legislator had to be posted on a few funda- 
mental subjects only; there was not much wealth, and what there was 
was more or less uniformly distributed, so that taxation was a simple 
matter; corporations had not been born; there was no labor problem. 
All this is changed. Government must now concern itself with minute 
and detailed social, economic and industrial affairs. Laws must be 
passed to regulate the quality of food,'to prevent child labor and to pro- 
hibit the manipulation of our credit institutions. A legislator must be 
well-nigh omniscient to have an intelligent opinion on all of these subjects. 
The biennial output of state legislation alone in the United States exceeds 
twelve thousand acts. Fourteen thousand one hundred and ninety laws 
and resolutions were enacted in 1901. Several state legislatures pass 
more than five hundred laws at a session and the average legislative 
session is not over ninety days in length. How can any man vote intelli- 
gently on the passage of so many laws in so short a time? 
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