Financial Legislation and its Limitations. 



75 



of wealth generally but principally of the workmen themselves, 

 directly, and indirectly through their employers. This inevitable 

 source of funds is certainly no recommendation of the law to 

 the former. A badly drawn child-labor law may harm children 

 and their parents more than it benefits them. A danger from 

 remedial legislation is either that the benefits are miscalculated 

 or imaginary, so that enactments really do directly more evil than 

 good, or that it interferes with the energy of society, as a creative 

 advancing organism. However, it is by errors of this sort that 

 the human race receives some of its most important lessons and 

 comes gradually to know itself. Legislation punctuates the 

 eternal discussion which, in academic shades, in parliaments, in 

 the pulpit, in the press, and in a thousand other places, makes for 

 human progress. The duty of society to succor the wrecks of 

 social struggle is imperative and direct; but the very natural 

 desire to " render competition milder " is misleading. There is 

 reason to believe that progress elevates competition if it does 

 not otherwise render it less acute. 



§ II. Competition, then, is better calculated to do justice than 

 unripe legislation, for it is difficult to interfere with systematic 

 social activities in such a way as to treat individuals justly, since 

 interference unavoidably will be sweeping, arbitrary, and by 

 general rule not adapted to individual cases. The law cannot 

 lend that " helping hand " which is the blessing of private 

 benevolence. Undoubtedly misfortune is happening to business 

 men all of the time. Miscalculations are constantly made, and 

 often by intelligent persons. Many fail who have made no errors 

 of judgment, but have been swept off their feet by "general 

 disaster" — by conditions over which they could have had no 

 control, or which they could have avoided, perhaps, only by 

 retiring cowardly from the field. Even trustees, with their trust 

 funds, are not infrequently innocently involved. 



However, it is not to be inferred that the machinery of business 

 will be brought to a standstill by misguided legislation, nor does 

 opposition to the latter in the slightest degree involve hard- 

 heartedness or denial of the virtues of magnanimity. But the 

 question of charity is clearly a distinct one from that of legisla- 



189 



It is almost 

 impossible to 

 enact reform 

 legislation 

 that does not 

 cover cases 

 not intended, 



