Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/231

Rh its power! The economist of the old school may boldly claim that so far as he has had a free hand his promises have been realized. There has been a larger population with increased means of subsistence and diminished necessity of toil, a people better housed, better fed, better clothed, with fewer relative failures of self-support; and if the teaching which has been partially adopted has brought about so much, everything it promised would have been secured had it been fully followed.

It will be conceded by the most fearless and thoroughgoing advocates of the liberty of individual development that it must be supported by large measures of co-operative action. The freedom and activity of association thus indicated are in no way inconsistent with the fullest theory of individual responsibility. A single workman may be powerless to induce his employer to modify in any particular the terms of his employment, but when workmen band together they may meet employers as equal powers. Such liberty of combination is a development and not a limitation of individual liberty. Another step is taken when the parties to such an arrangement as has been suggested seek to make its provisions compulsory on others, be they workmen or employers, who may enter into similar relations; and the principles of former economists would generally prompt them to condemn such attempts at compulsion. The Factory Acts were opposed in this way, although they rested upon different grounds; for, though in their consequences they affected the labor of adults, they were propounded for the defense of young persons and children unable to protect themselves or to be the parties to free contracts. Legislation has, however, been extended to control directly the employment of fully responsible persons, and this has been defended by three lines of argument. It is urged that, when the unchecked liberty of individuals destroys in fact the liberty of action of larger multitudes, it is in defense of liberty of action that those individuals are controlled. If a sea wall is necessary to prevent a large tract from being periodically inundated, it can not be permitted to the owner of a small patch along the coast to leave the wall unbuilt along his border, and thus threaten the lands of his neighbors with inundation. Again, it is urged that when the overwhelming majority of persons engaged in a particular industry, employers and employed, are agreed upon the necessity of certain rules to govern the industry, it is not merely a convenience, but is a fulfillment of their liberty, to clothe with the sanction of law the regulations upon which they are agreed. Lastly, it is submitted that there are individuals in whom the sense of responsibility is so weak, and whose development of forethought is so hopeless, that it is necessary the law should regulate their conduct as it may regulate the conduct of children. The