Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/691

Rh, officials may subject them to tests, and, if necessary, seize and kill them. In many States the pedigree of an animal has become more important than that of a man, and any falsification of the family tree of a horse or pig is severely punished. Other legislation assumes that Yankee prudence and shrewdness have passed away. Instead of facilitating redress against all frauds, it contains elaborate provisions in regard to the sale of bogus seeds and fertilizers. Finally, there is a mass of legislation, like beef-inspection laws and laws for the regulation or suppression of oleomargarine, that pretends devotion to the public welfare. But its principal object is to cater to greed and to establish monopolies.

Of the liveliest interest to the philanthropic statesman have been all subjects that relate to humanity, morality, and education. It has seemed as if he thought that without his malevolent interference his fellows would lapse into hopeless ignorance and barbarism. Accordingly, he has been at infinite pains to suppress intemperance, to stimulate sympathy and acts of kindness, and to break down any monopoly of intelligence and learning. In all the States there have been established huge and costly mechanisms for the wholesale inculcation of public and private wisdom and virtue. That no child might, through a perverse inclination or parental neglect, wander from the ranks of the droves crowding the public schools, compulsory education has been established. Agents have been appointed to hunt down little delinquents, and veritable prisons constructed to force them to quaff at the fountains of knowledge. More antagonistic even to the principles of a free democracy are the private organizations invested with the police powers of the State to suppress cruelty and vice. Outside of the machinery of responsible government, they wield an authority not subject to the checks of the police. The State has no more to do with the appointment of their agents, who may be grossly ignorant and incompetent, than with the appointment of the agents of a railroad or insurance company. Although supposed to be superior men, I have known them to practice tricks to catch their victims that would disgrace a knave, and to violate private rights with a recklessness hardly surpassed in Russia. The great mass of legislation in regulation of bibulous habits and customs is another reckless invasion of private rights. Without trying to discuss a subject that would fill a volume, I may mention two laws at least that illustrate in an alarming way the assimilation of democratic institutions with those of feudalism. One is the liquor law of New York, with its multitude of despotic and discriminating provisions, inviting evasion, and its centralized officialism, already shown to be grossly inefficient, if not depraved, to enforce them. The other is the dispensary law of South Carolina, which has created