Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/293

Rh power to license lodging houses used by immigrants, and that health and sanitation rules be more strictly enforced in the labor camps.

In making this brief survey of the experience of the Pacific coast states in state-building, the author has no doubt omitted several important features. Such omissions, with the exception of two, have been made because it was thought best to include only those features in which the Pacific coast states were somewhat distinctive. The two omissions just referred to are the rural problem and the development of business. These are important, but are without the limits of this paper.

The conclusions of this paper show that in empire-building citizens of a democracy have not hesitated to build according to the new theory of the state as set forth by the researches of political science, a theory that demands a government strongly and widely developed for the aims of social justice and collective effort. These new states have shown efficiency and built with dispatch. Government as collective organization and effort has been excellently demonstrated. The unrestrained liberty which has meant injustice to others or to the group has in many ways been restrained, and the forgotten rights of the unprotected have not been neglected. The new states have not hesitated to experiment. It is well to see these experiments in summary. Oregon was the first state to adopt the recall, the direct election of senators, the presidential preference primary, to pass an extensive ten-hour law for women and to put into effect the minimum wage law for women. California and Washington were first to adopt the eight-hour law for women. California was the first state in scientific budget making. Washington was first to abolish private employment bureaus and is first in the efficiency of public schools. Oregon was third to provide for the initiative and the referendum and was first to develop them. Oregon was second to adopt the direct primary and California was second to put into effect a law requiring the reporting of industrial diseases. There were only two states to precede the Pacific coast states in creating mothers’ pensions. In adopting other social legislation, while not the first, second or third states, Washington, Oregon and California were in a small leading group to legislate effectively on home rule for cities, child labor, hours of labor on public works, factory sanitation and inspection, employer’s liability, eugenics, prohibition, prison reform, public utilities, municipal ownership, the social evil and woman suffrage. The success of these experiments may be interpreted by observing the extent to which other states are following their example. To see the new social order of the Pacific coast, social legislation should be looked at in its entirety. This social order is distinctive. No other group of states possesses such a wealth of social legislation. This paper has aggregated the variety of cases found among these Pacific coast states and it is a very imposing picture that is revealed.