Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  ) 
November,  1920.  ) 
Law-Making. 
827 
THK  FAILURE  OF  EMOTIONAL  LEGISLATION. 
That  some  laws  succeed  fairly  well  in  correcting  the  evils  at  which 
they  are  aimed  all  can  testify  from  personal  observation,  that  some 
laws  do  not  work  at  all,  or  have  a  back  action  that  is  worse  than  in- 
action, is  a  matter  of  common  knowledge. 
If  we  examine  into  a  law  that  is  known  to  work  fairly  well  in 
practice  we  shall  usually  find  it  to  be  one  that  is  not  extreme  in  its 
provisions,  and  one  that  was  formulated  by  cool  and  deliberate 
judgment  in  the  light  of  well  established  precedents.  If  we  examine 
into  the  laws  that  are  admitted  failures  we  shall  find  almost  uni- 
versally that  they  are  extremely  drastic  in  their  provisions,  that  they 
were  composed  under  the  influence  of  strong  emotions  and  passed 
under  the  whip  of  intensive  propaganda. 
When  our  emotions  are  aroused  in  public  affairs  we  want  direct 
action  and  lots  of  it,  and  we  mistrust  the  motives  of  those  who  urge 
less  drastic  measures  as  a  more  certain,  though  slower  and  less  spec- 
tacular method  of  reaching  the  desired  end. 
We  regulated  the  railroads  with  our  emotions  instead  of  with  reason 
and  judgment  until  we  regulated  them  nearly  into  bankruptcy. 
Now  at  tremendous  cost  we  are  painfully  trying  to  work  back  to 
the  line  of  reason  and  moderation. 
When  we  undertook  to  regulate  the  trusts  we  again  rejected  the 
teachings  of  experience  and  the  reasonable  judgment  of  experts 
and  followed  emotional  leadership  with  the  result  that  we  hobbled 
and  altered  legitimate  business  enterprises  without  materially 
curbing  the  operations  of  those  the  law  was  intended  to  reach. 
This  emotionally  formulated  law  has  not  only  operated  to  prevent 
small  business  men  from  combining  to  protect  themselves  from  the 
aggressions  of  large  capital  interests,  but  every  time  Congress  has 
passed  an  appropriation  bill  it  has  been  reduced  to  the  pitiful  ex- 
pedient of  expressly  providing  that  the  money  appropriated  shall 
not  be  used  to  prosecute  violations  of  'he  law  by  certain  strongly 
organized  interests. 
Why  is  it  that  we  have  so  frequently  followed  emotional  leaders 
and  rejected  the  counsel  of  conservative  statesmanship?  Simply 
because  of  our  impatience  for  immediate  results.  It  is  the  same 
disposition  that  prompts  the  teacher  or  doctor  or  merchant  to  with- 
draw his  small  hoard  from  the  security  of  the  savings  bank  and  in- 
vest it  in  oil  stock  that  promises  a  thousand  per  cent,  return. 
