74 



W. G. Lanqivorthy Taylor 



Drawbacks 

 of remedial 

 legislation. 



is always administering to attempts to remedy adverse conditions 

 by changing phenomena instead of by going to the source of 

 miscalculation in ignorance and in defective power of connecting 

 cause with effect. Similar mistakes, in principle, are made in 

 matters affecting material phenomena, especially in hygiene; but 

 there the demonstration of the error is tangible. It can be 

 proved b\' laboratory experiments that men cannot " enrich " their 

 blood by drinking red wine. 



But society is never left free to go its own way. There is 

 always agitation on foot to remedy its pains (which are bac 

 enough) by some opiate. The evil is real, the remedy almost 

 always contains a measure of truth, but the degree of applica- 

 bility is seldom accurately calculated. Free trade contains the 

 most appropriateness of any of these schemes, for it proposes to 

 abandon regulation, but in a domain where it is so customary as 

 to be almost an organic part of the social customs. Few persons 

 outside of England are disposed to deny that it has worked fairly 

 well in that country, with the modifications it has admitted there. 

 Laws against " futures" and "options" seem to have given little 

 satisfaction in the countries that have adopted them. Govern- 

 ment money has always been economically considered a dismal 

 failure, except that occasionally it has been of temporary con- 

 venience to government itself looked upon as a corporation which 

 is interested in its own welfare apart from that of society. 



Single tax. government guaranty of the price of wheat, export 

 bounties on wheat, free silver, abolition of usury, regulation of 

 freight and passenger rates, anti-trust laws, government owner- 

 ship, eight-hour action, homestead and preemption privileges, 

 pure food inspection, guaranty of bank deposits, child-labor 

 regulation, prohibition — ^all of these and many other propositions, 

 a part of them already enacted into law, contain different elements 

 of usefulness, but are too frequently oft'ered as panaceas, and, in 

 the forms enacted, may do more harm than good. When the 

 reformer is brought face to face with legislation, he is luckily 

 compelled to take into consideration circumstances which he had 

 not previously duly weighed or publicly acknowledged. State 

 accident insurance, for instance, is provided for by taxation, not 



i88 



