Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/688

668 Yet they, too, have been treated like fools or knaves. In both fire and life insurance, heavy inroads have been made upon the right of private contract. Fire-insurance companies are forbidden to limit their liability. To encourage the industry of the incendiary, they are denied the right to contest on the ground of fraud the loss they shall pay. Besides crushing their freedom, legislators have raided their revenues. In one State at least contributions are exacted in support of the fire departments in towns of a given size. More onerous than those of fire insurance, the laws in regulation of life insurance declare that the statements made in a policy shall be representations only, and even if false, shall not impair the validity of the contract; that an agreement that a contest shall defeat recovery shall be void; and notwithstanding any provisions of the policy, the non-forfeiture law of the State shall control its interpretation. Official forms of contracts, deemed by Leroy Beaulieu to be the very essence of socialism, are framed and enforced. Although the mortality of blacks is greater than that of whites, no discrimination is permitted; and should an agent wish to add to his business by the abatement of his commissions, he can do so only at the risk of prosecution as a criminal. As well might the physician or attorney be punished for the acceptance of a fee below an official rate.

The vicious assaults of the legislatures upon the rights of corporations are paralleled by equally vicious assaults upon the rights of individuals. Here the police powers of the State have been subjected to the same abuse that has overtaken "the general welfare" clause of the Federal Constitution. Under the cover of them, greed and philanthropy have made equal inroads upon the liberty that Americans boast of so frequently and violate so shamelessly. To such a degree have they been stretched that scarcely a form of human activity from birth to death, both included, has not been subjected to meddlesome supervision. In the absurd attempt of impertinent persons to square the conduct of neighbors to their own notions of right and wrong, the whole field of health, labor, morals, and education has been cultivated with a zeal unequaled in modern times.

Take the laws in revival of the old trade and professional corporations, which were so long a bar to civilization, and did so much to inflame the French Revolution. Those that the plumbers, undertakers, and horseshoers on the one hand, and the dentists, druggists, and physicians on the other, have obtained are as repugnant to the principles of a free democracy as the feudal monopolies of Louis XI and Queen Elizabeth. Yet they have the sanction of the highest court in the land. "In the nature of things," says Justice Bradley, defending this despotic exercise of the police powers of the State,