permit their clients to invest their money in mortgages in California, Minnesota, Washington, or the other States indulging in such legislation, and partly for this reason the rate of interest prevailing in mortgages is very much higher in the far West than it is in States east of the Missouri River.

The greatest mass of legislation is, of course, that upon mechanic's liens, which are burdensome to a degree that is vexatious, besides being subject to amendment almost every year. In a general way, no land-owner is free from liability for the debt of any person who has performed labor or furnished materials on the buildings placed upon the land, even without the knowledge or consent of the land-owner in some States, though in one or two instances, notably in California, such legislation has been carried to such an extreme as to make it unconstitutional.

The matter of nuisances has been already somewhat covered. Legislation extending the police power and declaring new forms or uses of property to be a nuisance is, of course, rapidly increasing in all States. The common-law nuisance was usually a nuisance to the sense of smell or a danger to life, as, for instance, an unsanitary building or drain. Noise, that is to say, extreme noise, might also be a nuisance, and in England the interference with a man's right to light and air. Legislation is now eagerly desired in many States of this country to make in certain cases that which is a nuisance to the sense of sight also a legal nuisance, as, for instance, the posting of offensive bills on the fences, or the erection of huge advertising signs in parks or public highways. Such a law was, however, held unconstitutional in Massachusetts. There is some legislation against the blowing of steam whistles by locomotives, although I believe none against the morning whistle of factories, and some against the emission of black smoke in specified durations or quantities.

But perhaps the most important legislation affecting simple matters of business other than the line of statutes already mentioned, making new negotiable instruments and controlling the title of property by the possession of a bill of exchange, bill of lading, warehouse or trust receipt, are those statutes prohibiting the buying of "futures," or the enforcement of gambling contracts to buy or sell stocks or shares or other commodities without actual or intended change of possession, which we have necessarily referred to in our discussion of restraint of trade. There is a very decided tendency throughout the country, particularly in the South, to prohibit all buying or selling of futures, that is to say, of a crop not actually sold, or of any article where physical delivery is never intended, and it will be remembered we found plenty of precedent for such legislation in early English statutes. Gambling contracts may be forbidden only in specified places, such as stock exchanges; and the buying of futures may be

specially permitted to favored persons, such as actual manufacturers intending to use the goods; and both such statutes will be held constitutional and not an undue interference with the liberty of contract. These matters were largely covered by the statutes of forestalling in early times. Legislation more distinctly modern is that against sales in bulk, and against department stores; more striking still is the statute, already passed in Wisconsin and Virginia, forbidding all tips, commissions, or private advantages secured by any servant or agent in carrying on the business of his principal, his master, or the person with whom he deals; the statute even forbids a gratuity intentionally given directly from the one to the other. It is hard to see how the last clause of the law can be held constitutional, any more than the laws forbidding department stores, although such commissions may be forbidden to be given "unbeknownst."

Weights and measures are standardized by the Federal government, and to these standards the States in practice all conform, but the legal weight of a bushel or other measure of articles varies widely in the different States, and the State Commissioners on Uniformity of Law have tried in vain to get the matter generally regulated. At one time the weight of a barrel of potatoes in New York City was fourteen pounds more than it was in Hoboken, across the river. In Massachusetts the weight of a barrel of onions was increased two pounds to conform with the uniform law recommended to all the States by the commissioners; but a representative in the State Legislature coming from a locality of onion farms lost his seat in consequence, which inspired such terror in other members of the State Legislature that the uniform law was promptly repealed, the weight of the barrel of onions put back at the former figure, and this over the veto of the governor. It is needless to say that the whole value and object of the whole movement for uniformity is to have actual uniformity. That is to say, unless the lawyer or citizen reading the statute can be sure that it is uniform with the laws of all other States without taking the trouble to consult them, the reform has no value. But it has proved almost hopeless to get this through the brain of the average legislator. The uniform law upon bills and notes, indeed, already mentioned, is treated with more respect; because, as has been said above, they regard that as a matter of business, and they have some respect for the expert knowledge of business affairs possessed by business men.

The licensing of trades might be made a very valuable line of legislation to prevent the fleecing of the ultimate consumer by the middleman. Our ancestors were of the opinion that the middleman, the regrator, was the source of all evils, and they were also of the opinion that any combination whatever to control the price of an article of food, or other human necessity, or to resell it elsewhere than at its

actual market and at the proper time, was a conspiracy highly criminal and prejudicial to the English people; in both of which matters they were, in the writer's opinion, perfectly right, and far more wise than our modern delusion that "business" - that is to say, the making of a little more profit from the larger number of people justifies everything. Now, at the time of the coal famine of 1903, Massachusetts passed a statute licensing dealers in coal; the law for the municipal coal-yard having been declared unconstitutional. The object of this statute was not to derive revenue or to restrict trade, but to regulate profits; and in particular to prevent the retail coal-dealers from combining to fix the price of coal themselves. Yet in spite of this legislation, the ice-dealers of Massachusetts only this year (1910) assembled in convention in Boston upon a call, widely advertised in the newspapers, that they were holding the assembly for that precise purpose, that is to say, to fix and control the price and the output of ice. They were, indeed, "malefactors of great wealth"; at least we may guess the latter, and the animus of a more intelligent precedent may some day hopefully be directed to such definite evils, of which our ancestors were well aware, rather than blindly running amuck at all. The coal-dealers in Boston, by the way, made the same argument that is always made, and was made at Athens in the grain combination of the third century B.C. to wit, that they put up the prices in order to prevent other people buying all the coal and speculating in it; but notwithstanding that showing of their altruistic motives, the secretary of state revoked the license of the coal company in question. The statute also forbade the charging extortionate prices, which, again, was a perfectly proper subject of legislation under the common law; but, unfortunately, was carelessly drawn, so that it resulted in a somewhat cloudy court opinion.

For the matter of uniform legislation the reader must be referred in general to reports of the National Commission. Their greatest achievement has been the code of the law of bills and notes just mentioned. Besides this they have just adopted a code on the law of sales, and they have recommended brief and uniform formalities as well as forms for the execution and acknowledgment of deeds and wills, and have very considerably improved the procedure in matters of divorce. The best modern legislation concerning trade and business is, of course, that of the pure-food laws. The Federal law has certainly proved effective, although it is in danger of being repealed or emasculated in the interest of the "special interests"; most of the State laws simply copy it. Undoubtedly the laws should be identical in interstate commerce and in all the States; and this can only be done by voluntary uniform action.

THE COURTS AND PROPERTY

BY CHARLES F. EMERICK, SMITH COLLEGE, NORTHAMPTON, MASS. (From a Series of Articles on the Struggle for Equality in the United States. Popular Science Monthly, Dec. 1913-June, 1914)

The constitutional safeguards which surround private property in the United States are exceptionally strong. Between confiscation and the multitude stand the state and the federal courts. In Cutting vs. Goddard, decided in 1901, the Supreme Court held that a return of 10.9 per cent on the investment is not unreasonably high and that a return of 5.3 per cent is unreasonably low. In decreeing the dissolution of the Standard Oil and the American Tobacco Companies, the same tribunal left the defendant companies in possession of everything which they had succeeded in amassing by unlawful methods. Nowhere in either of these decisions is there any hint that restitution ought to be made. On the contrary, every precaution necessary to conserve the property which monopoly control had garnered together was scrupulously observed. In the course of the Standard Oil decision, the Chief-Justice remarked "that one of the fundamental purposes of the statute (the Anti-trust Act) is to protect, not to destroy, rights of property." No penalty was inflicted other than dissolution and the prohibition of acts violative of the statute. So far as constitutional guaranties are concerned, the most strenuous advocate of property rights could scarcely ask for anything more.

I

Nevertheless, the extent to which the Supreme Court conserves the rights of property is easily exaggerated. The Dred Scott decision did not prevent the overthrow of slavery, and moreover without compensation. On the contrary, it hastened its downfall and proved to be the one thing from which the slave power might well have prayed to be delivered. Much comfort was extracted by an influential portion of the property-owning class from the income tax decision in 1895, but the cost of what was gained from that decision has seldom figured properly in the account. Probably no decision of the Supreme Court since the Civil War has excited so much dissatisfaction or fallen so flat. In the opinion of many the court as now constituted would find a way of upholding a similar measure even though the constitution had not been amended. To save the face of the court was the strongest argument for proposing the income-tax amendment. But the decision of 1895 1 Ripley, William Z., Railway Problems, p. 578.

2 United States Supreme Court Reports, Vol. LV, Law. Ed., October, 1910, p. 652.

fanned the fires of social discontent. It unmasked the motives of those opposed to an income tax. On the one hand, are those well able to bear the burden of taxation upon whom a properly administered income tax would to a considerable extent rest. On the other hand, are the beneficiaries of protection who fear that an income tax will deprive them of one pretext for the maintenance of the tariff. The glaring injustice of any income tax apportioned among the several states according to population, in conformity with the court's decision, made such a tax impracticable. One effect was to discredit the court itself. Another fact had a similar effect. In its first decision, the court divided evenly on certain of the points at issue. After reargument it stood five to four against the act on these points. Far from conserving the social order, the income-tax decision did quite the re

verse.

Professor Daniels says:

The decision or, more strictly, the decisions of the Supreme Court which killed the Income Tax of 1894 made a great deal of history, and unmade, or at all events remade, a good deal of law. It certainly traversed legal expectation, it jostled the doctrine of stare decisis, it contravened previous decisions, and it discredited a good many dicta which had already become "blessed words" among authoritative text writers and accredited authorities on constitutional law. . . . The deliverance of the court can be explained only by reference to what has been happily termed "psychological climate."

The Supreme Court had reversed its own decision before, but except in the legal tender cases no modern decision had been reversed which bore very directly upon the stirring political issues of the day. But the court evidently had not been appealed to in vain upon the issue that the tax was a stride towards socialism, and the "weightier matters of the law" seemed to have been forgotten under the shadowy sense of dread which the dim specter of socialism invoked. The most venerable member of the court gave emphatic utterance to the feeling which moved him. "The present assault upon capital," said Mr. Justice Field, "is but the beginning. It will be but a stepping-stone to other, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich, a war constantly growing in intensity and bitterness." 1

Probably the Dartmouth College case has been more often quoted than any other as indicative of the jealous care with which the Supreme Court safeguards property rights. But few decisions illustrate better the relativity of judicial decisions to the circumstances existing at the time and place. When the decision was handed down, business was still conducted on a very modest scale, and the era of the corporate form of business organization was yet to come. In view of the important respects in which the doctrine of charter rights has been modified in subsequent cases, it is probable that the decision handed

1 Daniels, Winthrop More, The Elements of Public Finance, pp. 199, 200, 206.