Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/689

Rh "it is not every citizen of every age, sex, and condition that is qualified for every calling and position. It is the prerogative of the legislator," he added, framing a rule that would apply to every form of human activity from that of a cook to that of a statesman, "to prescribe regulations founded upon Nature, reason, and experience for the due admission of qualified persons to professions and callings demanding special skill and confidence." Going a step further in the assertion of this power of a paternal despotism, Judge Napton, of the highest court of Missouri, has declared that "the State legislatures have the power, unless there be something in their own Constitution to prohibit it, of entirely abolishing or placing under restrictions any trade or profession which they may think expedient." Imagine what Jefferson would think of such a doctrine, one that would have obliged him to hunt for a licensed blacksmith to shoe the horse that he rode to the capital to deliver his famous address! Imagine what John Adams would say at the discovery of a law that would not have permitted him to build a drain to his own house, or to buy of a jobber the pipes and faucets needed to repair his plumbing! Would they not be moved to issue a new Declaration, and to fight another War of Independence?

No class of people has suffered more from despotism or has a greater interest in freedom than wage-earners. Civilization made its longest stride when they ceased to be slaves or serfs, and gained the right to go wherever work was to be had and to make with their employers such agreements as they pleased. Still, no class has more completely falsified the praise of Sir Henry Maine, the highest that can be paid to a free democracy. "The American people," he wrote scarcely more than a decade ago, "are still of the opinion that more is to be got for human happiness by private energy than by public legislation." To-day it is upon the State rather than public opinion on the one hand, and industry and frugality upon the other, that toilers have come to rely for the redress of grievances and the procurement of abundance. Guilty themselves of every act of aggression they complain of, they have had enacted the most despotic and discriminating legislation to be found in the statute books. Besides the well-known laws in regulation of the work of women and children, there is a multitude of other laws still more destructive of freedom. I have mentioned those that require