attached to individual responsibility and individual freedom. A third influence, favourable to the extension of state control, may be found in the literature and philosophy of the most civilized continental peoples-especially of the Germans. At the beginning of this century the English people, isolated by its long war with France, and proud of its achievements in that war, had touched the highest point of arrogant self-confidence. Englishmen were inclined to regard all imported theories with suspicion, and, if they related to commerce or industry, with contempt as well. All this has been changed. The material progress of other nations has raised their standing in English eyes. The political and economic pre-eminence of England has been much reduced. Increased facilities for travel and transmission of intelligence have made the Englishman more cosmopolitan. The vast space which the action of government fills in such countries as France or Germany, and the audacious theories which it has generated, have made a deep impression on the English mind. Lastly, the benevolent despotism which we have established in India, with at least a wonderful apparent success, has reacted on English political ideas and has recommended state action to many who would not have been accessible to speculative arguments.

The practical result of the change in public opinion, insensibly produced by all these agencies, is seen in the sweeping legislation of the last forty years. During that time the state has extended its activity in every direction.

Looking a little deeper we see an intelligible reason for a farreaching change of attitude on the part of democratic thinkers, toward the state, in the series of political changes which have converted the government from an oligarchic constitution to one in which the will of the majority can, at least when it is sufficiently resolute and united, obtain its way. The government which the men of Bentham's day criticized was something too nearly resembling a close and corrupt corporation; it was not distinguished for competence, it was not remarkable for an enlightened and disinterested view of public questions. The modern writer, if he sympathizes with democratic aims, looks at government as a machine which may be used to embody his views and give them legal effect. He has overcome his

Adapted by permission from L. T. Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, pp. 182-84. (Columbia University Press, 1911.)

distrust; he has found that efficiency is possible; and he has come to assume honesty and integrity almost as a matter of course.

Here we touch a still deeper cause which must be brought into the account. The period which we have reviewed has witnessed a progressive deepening of humanitarian feeling and of the sense of collective responsibility. The public mind will no longer acquiesce in the sweater's den any more than it would acquiesce in this country sixty years ago in negro slavery. On all sides men are agreed that problems of poverty, problems of education, problems of physical, mental, and moral efficiency are matters not merely of individual and private but equally of public and governmental concern. They do not deny the duty or depreciate the responsibility of the individual for himself or of the parent for his family, but they superimpose upon these a duty of the citizen to the state and a responsibility of the state for the individual.

C1

When the theory of evolution began to take its place as an important factor in philosophical thought, it furnished the individualists with a new line of argument. If the struggle for existence has been the basis of all progress, they said, through the resultant survival of the fittest, then any interference with the natural conditions of that struggle means an interference with the beneficent result. If the survival of the fittest has brought us safely from the amoeba to the human being, why not trust it to take us the rest of this journey that we call progress? The shift from the rather vague and mystical "natural order" basis to this apparently scientific standing ground did not, however, serve their purpose well. The natural order was one "endowed with all the grandeur of the geometrical order with its double attributes of universality and immutability. It remained the same for all times and for all men." One could do nothing but seek humbly to understand it and to live according to its laws. Now, an attempt to substitute for this firm foundation the shifting sand of evolution had certain inevitable reactions in thinking minds. They saw that as soon as the idea of immutability of standards gives place to the idea of relativity the way has been opened for a vastly greater possibility of change brought about by conscious human effort. The words "survival of the fittest" cease to be the magic formula of a scientific natural order. Fittest to survive means just this and nothing more, that those survive who are able to survive, i.e., able 'Prepared by L. M. Powell.

to cope with the environment in which they find themselves. And the environment, at any rate since the human stage has been reached, has never been a "natural" one in the sense of being unaffected by human desire to mold it.

From this point it is not a far cry to the idea that if human effort can change the environment at all, it can change it in such ways as to secure the survival of those who are fit according to ethical rather than biological standards. But here we must take care lest we fall again into the pit of "immutability." With the concept of society as a developing, changing entity comes, as we have already noted, the realization that no one set of institutions and ideals can claim for itself permanent recognition. We learn this lesson slowly and painfully through sheer experience. The regulations on trade that meet the needs of a growing national government are carried into the next stage of that nation's development and bear grievously upon it. The freedom of each manufacturer and trader to do as he sees fit comes to mean competition on the lowest and most harmful plane. Given the attitude of mind that is a result of the evolutionary interpretation of history-willingness to apply the idea of change and development to ideals and standards as well as institutions—and we have a new and keen-edged tool in clearing the way for needed change.

400. WHAT GOVERNMENT IS NOW DOING1

The chief forms of modern government interference with private industry may be put under the four heads of action in behalf of consumers, of producers, of investors, and of the community in general.

1. In the Middle Ages the government interposed in behalf of the consumers, either to guarantee good work or to insure reasonable price. Both of these forms of interference have disappeared in general industry today, because custom has been replaced by competition. In modern times, accordingly, we find that the chief form of interference with competitive industry in behalf of the consumer is legislation to safeguard health, as in the case of food inspection and quarantine regulation.

2. On the other hand, the interests of the laborer have been so materially affected by the advent of the factory system that modern interference on behalf of the producers is well-nigh exclusively limited

Adapted by permission from E. R. A. Seligman, Principles of Economics, pp. 574-76. (Longmans, Green & Co., 1905.)

to them. There are five classes of such interference, all of which, except the last, are rapidly becoming universal: (a) legislation to safeguard health, through the so-called factory laws, applicable to men, women, and children alike; (b) legislation to insure safety through employers' liability laws; (c) legislation fixing maximum hours of work, as in the case of the eight-hour law for miners and public employees; (d) compulsory insurance against illness, old age, or lack of employment; and, finally, (e) legislation fixing minimum wages, as in Australia and New Zealand.

3. In former times the striking example of interference by government in case of investment was in behalf of the borrower. The usury laws, designed to protect the unfortunate debtor, have, as we know, been rendered almost completely unnecessary through the growth of competition in the loan of capital. This same development has, however, brought about the need of intervention of the opposite kind. Today, it is the lender or investor in corporate enterprise, and not the borrower, who requires protection. Here, again, there are dangers on both sides, the risk of over-rigidity which will hamper legitimate enterprise, and the danger of lax accountability which will destroy confidence. That, however, some solid measure of regulation is requisite can no longer be successfully disputed.

4. We come, finally, to the case of government interference in behalf of the general interest of the community. This takes the form of protection and also of bounties and subsidies.

The danger of such intervention is that particular interests may foist themselves upon the legislator in the guise of general interests. Bounties may be classified as (a) military bounties, (b) forest bounties, (c) agricultural and industrial bounties, and (d) land transport and shipping subsidies.

See also 235. Labor Legislation in One State.

305-8 on Certain Phases of Trust Legislation.

401. THE RAIN OF LAW

A1

The day of universal law has arrived. It seems to be a lap or two ahead of time. It is not just the kind of law that is written upon the hearts of men or upon the doorposts of their houses, and it is very difficult to teach it to our children, or to meditate upon it day or night. There isn't time. It is printed on a rapid-fire printing-press and bound in unabridged sheep or blue-sky boards. The kindly earth does not slumber in its lap-it fairly wallows in the litter of it. The law-abiding and the law-evading citizens lie down together in the confusion of it. He who reads must run if he would escape the deluge of it, and he who runs must read if he would keep up with the changing phases of it.

In Massachusetts, which leads the world in the volume and plasticity of its statutory output, President Eliot's five-foot shelf will not begin to hold the volumes a man must read if he would know what he is bidden and what he is forbidden; and a new volume will be placed in his hands ere he can scan the current one. All the states need to conserve their natural resources to provide the paper and drive the presses of their legislative mills; and, lest in their impotence they should fail to do full justice to the situation, Congress comes to their aid with ponderous volumes of its own. By yielding its claim to be a deliberative body the National House finds time to hear called off the captions of bills as they pass from its committees to enactment through the pneumatic tube of the government printing-office.

But the unofficial, the uninitiated, the plebeian citizen must beware. It will not do for him to govern himself merely by sound principles of conduct, or even by a fair familiarity with the general law of the land. A neighbor in securing a legislative proviso expressly to authorize a transaction that some random critic has challenged, may, by his very proviso, have read into the law an implied prohibition of all practices not thus explicitly provided for. One who, in all innocence, pursues the even tenor of his once legalized way, may awake any morning to find himself a law-breaker, not by enactment, but by inference from some enactment which was procured for his neighbor's benefit.

It is a physical impossibility for the legislators, as a body, to scrutinize with any care such a mass of bills as every legislature enacts Adapted by permission from W. D. Parkinson, "The Rain of Law," Atlantic Monthly, CXIV (1914), 107–9.

I