H 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. X. No. 231 



some legislator has thought of touching. We do not regulate the 

 price that a man shall pay for his food and clothing, but we do say 

 what kind of food and clothing can be sold to him, and under what 

 conditions. In looking over the statutes of the session just closed, 

 I see that it will no longer be safe for a man to send his children to 

 a private school unless that school complies with some of the 

 technical regulations of the State Board of Education in the matter 

 of returns to their secretary ; that a man cannot sell the securities 

 of foreign trust and investment companies in this State unless those 

 companies have submitted to certain examinations by our bank 

 commissioners. Butter and molasses are under the protecting care 

 of the dairy commissioner. Nobody can negotiate the insurance of 

 his neighbor without a license to do so from the insurance com- 

 missioner. A man cannot travel on a railroad-train on Sunday, 

 and have the benefit of his commutation or mileage ticket. If, in 

 case of illness in my family, I find there is no brandy in the house, 

 and it is wanted at once, it is illegal for my grocer to give it to my 

 boy if I send him for it in a hurry. If I run a factory, it must be 

 run as the newly appointed inspector of factories says is right, and 

 not as the business may compel me." 



The data from New York State which has reached us, while 

 plentiful, is not very specific. The large majority of our corre- 

 spondents in that State coincide in stating that State interference is 

 on the increase. Assemblyman Ernest H. Crosby of New York City 

 writes that interference has lately been shown in the appointment 

 of such officials as railroad commissioners, factory inspectors, com- 

 missioners of arbitration, and so forth, and in acts regulating the 

 price of gas, limiting the hours of labor on street-railways, etc. 

 Mr. Herbert L. Osgood of Brooklyn refers to the Mechanics' Lien 

 Act of 1885 as an interference with the freedom of contract. He 

 mentions also an act compelling employers to erect proper scaffold- 

 ings for those at work upon buildings, an act regulating the height 

 of dwellings in New York City, acts relating to the manufacture 

 and sale of oleomargarine, the sale of butter, the slaughter of cattle, 

 etc. The State expends about twenty-eight thousand dollars a 

 year in subsidizing agricultural societies. 



With respect to State interference in New Jersey, we are in pos- 

 session of extremely full returns, for the most valuable portions of 

 which we are under obligations to Mr. William I. Lewis of Pater- 

 son. Mr. Lewis finds as the result of a careful examination of the 

 legislation since 1878, — to and including the session of 1S86, — • 

 that about two-sevenths of the laws show a marked tendency 

 toward interference with personal affairs, and about one-seventh 

 additional show a slight tendency in that direction. In the period 

 mentioned above, 2,016 laws have been enacted, and 414 of them 

 are for the purpose of controlling or regulating private and personal 

 affairs or business. Of these 414 laws, seven provide for agricul- 

 tural experiments ; two protect bottlers of beer by establishing a 

 peculiar procedure, and inflicting peculiar penalties on persons who 

 steal bottles or unlawfully have them in their possession ; fourteen 

 regulate the sale of butter and milk ; one directs how cows shall 

 not be fed ; eight are designed to protect children by regulating 

 their employment and education ; two to encourage organizations 

 of workingmen ; one establishes standard packages for cranberries ; 

 one provides for the construction of proper waste-gates in dams ; 

 four are in aid of deaf-mutes ; three regulate the manufacture and 

 sale of fertilizers ; two offer bounties for the production of jute, 

 flax, and hemp ; fifty-seven are for the protection of game and 

 fish ; thirty-six are for the protection of health ; two deal with the 

 cutting and sale of ice ; twenty-seven regulate the business of in- 

 surance ; ten establish and encourage a bureau of labor statistics ; 

 seven aim to improve meadow and swamp lands ; three deal with 

 pilots and their apprentices ; six incorporate rifle societies, and en- 

 courage marksmanship ; seventy-seven concern education ; twelve 

 provide for the maintenance of an industrial school for girls ; four 

 are for the better securing of wages to workingmen ; and six con- 

 cern the relief, protection, etc., of workingmen. 



This exhibit of Mr. Lewis's exemplifies excellently the tenor of 

 legislation in New Jersey. We could wish that we had as accurate 

 an analysis of the laws elsewhere ; but it will be seen that there is 

 general concensus of opinion among our correspondents to the ef- 

 fect that the tendency toward State interference is not confined to 

 any one State or group of States. 



Prof. E. J. James of Philadelphia writes that "the course of legis- 

 lation in Pennsylvania is very similar to that in Minnesota ; " and 

 Professor Holmes of the University of Virginia mentions local op- 

 tion, railroad supervision, the multiplicity and inquisitorial charac- 

 ter of the taxes, civil marriages, and the drummers' tax law (re- 

 cently declared unconstitutional) as recent evidences of a similar 

 development of legislative activity. 



Our most definite reply from the south-western States comes 

 from Hon. Logan H. Roots, president of the board of trustees of 

 St. John's College, Little Rock, Ark. Mr. Roots says that " a ten- 

 dency upon the part of the indolent to ascribe their poverty to hon- 

 esty, and the prosperity of the industrious to dishonesty, seems to 

 have seized the ignorant ; and the legislators pandering to that 

 tendency have many of them acted on the theory that any thing or 

 person that prospered was per se a ' fraud ' which must be regu- 

 lated. The special ' frauds to be regulated ' in the eyes of our re- 

 cent Legislature were money-lenders, telephones, railroads, and 

 cottonseed-oil mills, with some attention given to prices at which 

 merchants might transact business." 



Of the central-western States, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois are fol- 

 lowing the same road that we find to be so popular elsewhere. 

 Ohio has a board of stock commissioners with absolute power to 

 regulate the trade in live-stock and all importations, dairy commis- 

 sioners, and special laws to govern the sale of farm-products, laws 

 prohibiting the sale of liquor in certain places, and so on through a 

 long list. 



Illinois is overrun with such laws, and Mr. Edward J. Cahill of 

 Chicago sends us a long hst of them. Since 1871, Illinois has 

 been in the grain-weighing business : it designates elevators for 

 the storage of grain, and regulates its transportation by railroad . 

 Mills and millers are carefully looked after, including the manner of 

 grinding, the character of the buildings and tools used, etc. A 

 bounty of ten dollars an acre is at the disposal of those who will 

 plant forest-trees. Fence-laws appoint fence-viewers, who see that 

 all fences are four and a half feet high, and that proper materials 

 are used. A State board of agriculture, with a corps of salaried 

 officials, promotes agriculture and horticulture. This board spent 

 thirty-six thousand dollars in 1885, and is authorized to bestow five 

 thousand dollars annually in premiums at fairs and stock-shov\'s. 

 The Bureau of Statistics, organized in 1879, has become a depart- 

 ment of state, and presents annual reports on the social, educa- 

 tional, and sanitary condition of the laboring-classes. Game-laws 

 are numerous. The manufacture of butter and cheese is regulated : 

 five hundred dollars goes every year to assist dairymen in making 

 reports. Illinois offered ten thousand dollars to the citizens \vho 

 had exhibits at the New Orleans exhibition ; it also pays from fifty 

 thousand to one hundred thousand dollars to assist cities which, 

 through the negligence of their officials, fail to take proper precau- 

 tions against damage and loss by fire and water. Mr. Cahill also 

 points out what the effect of the passage of such bills has been on 

 subsequent Legislatures. In the session of 1887, for instance, 

 about eight hundred bills were presented to the Legislature, and 

 fully three-fourths of them had a tendency toward State interfer- 

 ence. " We have bills seeking to regulate contracts between em- 

 ployer and employee, providing for the giving to each party a given 

 number of days' notice to quit or intention to quit, calling for 

 mutual co-operative associations for pecuniary profit, to increase 

 the power of the department of labor, to provide for arbitration of 

 labor-troubles, to grant additional labor-liens, to enforce the eight- 

 hour movement, and to encourage mutual loan associations on the 

 co-operative plan. The effect of State interference with profes- 

 sions and other business interests has created new demands : the 

 architect petitions for a special board ; the stenographer demands 

 recognition ; and in due course we shall have the merchant-tailor 

 and the corner grocer, for already we have the liquor interest ask- 

 ing for a State board to pass on ' good whiskey ; ' and the pro- 

 hibitionist asks for a bureau for the study of the nature and effect 

 of alcoholic beverages, etc.; while the ' mugwump ' of religion is 

 on hand, seeking recognition by way of ' ethical instruction ' in our 

 public schools ; and, to crown the ridiculous, we have the Live- 

 stock Board, just created, asking ' that companies be formed for 

 the detection and apprehension of horse-thieves ; ' thus making a 

 farce of our criminal procedure." 



