ludes himself into supposing that they correspond with one another in the main, whereas it is generally true that they do not. To this curious fact is largely due his singular inaptitude for studying his own institutions in the concrete. He never can divest himself of his preconceived theory. Professor von Holst was much struck with this in observing the attitude of the American mind toward the Federal Constitution. Mr. Woodrow Wilson, also, in his recent book, "Congressional Government, points out most interestingly the popular blindness as to the wide drift of Federal practice away from the exquisite system of cunningly devised checks and balances contained in the theory of the written Constitution. Never for a moment relinquishing their theory, the people of the United States have assiduously pursued and cherished a practical policy utterly inconsistent with that theory, and have not perceived the discrepancy. I speak of this merely by way of illustration. My proposition is that the average American is just as blind with respect to the general economic bearings of his legislative practice as he is to the drift of his constitutional machinery. He humbugs himself by trying to adhere both to the schoolmasters and to the practical politicians. He studies his political economy in a text-book of abstractions, and not in the history of nations or the concrete conditions about him. Consequently he manages to keep his economics and his practical politics as separate as some men do their religion and their business, and he is just as naïvely unconscious of it. Excepting only his protective tariff, for which he learns to make an ingenious apologyalthough with perplexed mind and troubled conscience he really believes himself to be a fairly consistent practitioner of the laissez faire creed that he professes. If I have expressed my idea clearly, and if my observations are wellfounded, the current opinion pronounced by Mr. Goschen in the passage quoted above, is, to some extent at least, accounted for.

Two other observations it occurs to me to make as preliminary to some detailed statements about Government in terference in the United States. In the first place, the precise modes of action

which a much-governing State will assume are determined by the social conditions of the people. In the United States, and especially in the newer commonwealths of the West, Government interference will naturally have to do with some matters quite distinct from those which it touches in England or on the European Continent; and it would obviously be impossible to judge of the real measure and spirit of State interference in Nebraska, for instance, by checking off correspondences on a catalogue of the various functions that have been assumed by the British Government. In judging of the extent to which the State invades the domain of the individual, circumstances must be fully considered. In the second place, due attention must be given to the fact that the distribution of functions through a sort of hierarchy of governments conceals somewhat the full extent of public interference with private affairs in the United States. Foreigners have their attention arrested by the Federal Government at Washington, and often imperfectly understand the wide ranges of domestic authority exercised by the State Governments, and delegated by them in large part to the Governments of counties, cities, villages, townships, and school districts. The State Government and its subordinate local Governments touch the citizen at a hundred points where that of the Union comes once into direct contact with him. To be sure, the Federal Government maintains the Post Office; it practises a

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paternal" public land policy on a vast scale; it has made large grants of land for educational purposes; it has subsidized the great railroads of the West; it expends vast revenues for river and harbor improvements; its Excise laws invade every community; it allows its judiciary to settle controversies between citizens of different States; it controls currency and banking; and it affects the duty of developing manufacturing industry and keeping up high wages by its protective tariffs. Certainly these practices depart considerably from strictly laissez-faire notions. But it is in the individual States and in the very home of the citizen that the subject of Government interference must be examined.

In most of the States biennial legislative sessions are held, and these are generally very short, being limited in many cases by constitutional provision. Nevertheless, an astounding quantity of legislation is achieved, and the mass affords rare opportunities for comparative study. Even a cursory examination reveals a strongly assimilative tendency. Laws find their way verbatim from the statute-books of one State to those of another. The spirit, aims and methods of legislation are the same throughout a large group of neighboring States. The more than thirty Legislatures of 1885, in sessions averaging not longer than ten or twelve weeks, must have enacted five thousand general laws, or material amendments to general laws, at a low estimate. To these must be added several thousand acts of local and special legislation. The one common and striking characteristic of this huge collection of new statutes is its utter disregard of the laissez-faire principle. A hasty turning of pages and reference to the titles of Bills give the impression that nearly all the more important of these enactments flagrantly violate the non-interference theory. They deal with the citizen in every conceivable relation. They seem to have left nothing for future Legislatures to regulate. And yet, if we refer back to the legislative out-put" of 1883, we find the same striking characteristics, while that of 1887 promises to be even more varied and pronounced in its departures from orthodoxy.

Clearly it would not be feasible in a single article to discuss recent regulative legislation in all the States. It will be more convenient to make the examination from the standpoint of a single State, with incidental reference to others. It is of the newer Western States that I desire to treat more particularly, and I shall select Minnesota as a representative. The Legislature of Minnesota holds sessions of sixty days, beginning with the first Monday in January; and the laws which it enacted in the session of 1885 I shall discuss as the basis of this article. Minnesota is principally an agricultural State, its leading crop being wheat. Northern Minnesota and Northern Dakota form a part of the same great

wheat field. The wilderness has been brought under cultivation with astonishing rapidity since 1880. Railroads penetrating this new grain region have come into magical being. In a region so newly developed, with no accumulated capital, with only a single staple crop, and with mortgages covering the land to secure loans inade for buildings, farm machinery, etc., the marketing and transportation of the grain become matters of prime importance. This of course is especially true in seasons like that of 1884, with the world price of wheat so closely approximating to the cost of production. Minnesota and Dakota grain has been handled by extensive elevator companies having headquarters at Minneapolis, Duluth, and other points, and maintaining a series of warehouses at frequent intervals along the railroads. By special contracts and private understandings with the railroad companies, these elevator lines have been able to maintain, in effect, a monopoly in the storage and purchase of grain. The farmers have thus been practically shut off from the advantages of an open market. There was no feasible alternative for them but to ship their grain through the odious elevator, against which they preferred the charges of false grading, false weights and measures, excessive tolls, and dishonest dockages for dirt and chaff. Their feeling was intensified by the fact that the average price of wheat rendered the difference between a first and second grade at the elevator or between a high and low freight rate on the railroad, sufficient to change a slight profit into sheer loss on the crop. Although their statement of it was exaggerated, the farmers doubtless had a real grievance. In this mood they elected their legislative representatives. The body was largely composed of farmers, and its avowed object was the strict regulation by law of railroads and of the handling of grain. Almost the entire session was devoted to these subjects. Scores of Bills were introduced, many of them full of the most arbitrary and "ironclad" provisions. There was no lack of disposition to carry State regulation to the extremest lengths. Hesitancy arose only from the fear lest the farmers might injure themselves, if they crip

pled the railroads and elevators with over-severe restrictions. Great debates were held outside as well as inside the legislative chambers. Railroad and elevator managers appeared before legis lative committees. Testimony was procured as to the working of railroad and grain inspection laws in other States. Conferences were held with committees from the Dakota Legislature, which was also in session and tugging at the same problems. Everybody was agreed in advocating regulative laws, but there were vast differences of opinion as to the extent to which the laws should go. At length two very detailed statutes were agreed upon, one regulating railroad companies, and the other regulating warehouses and the handling, weighing, and inspection of grain. The enforcement of both laws was placed in the hands of a board of three railroad and warehouse commissioners. The railroad law provides vigorous penalties to punish discrimination between shippers. It requires that cars shall be supplied to any applicant, that the right to build warehouses on railroad land adjoining the tracks shall be freely accorded, and that side-tracks shall be provided. It is designed to break up the monopoly of the elevator companies by compelling the railroads to give equal privileges to all shippers. The commissioners are required to take up the cause of any aggrieved individual and prosecute the railroads at the public cost and with the aid of the public prosecuting attorneys. In various minor respects this law subjects the railroad companies to strict regulation. It was with difficulty that the majority in the lower house of the Legislature were induced to accept the law without rigid prescriptions as to rates for freight and passenger charges. Experience in several Western States has, however, shown that such prescriptions, especially of freight rates, are of doubtful advantage to the public. A large measure of discretionary authority as to rates was conferred upon the commissioners, and they have not hesitated to exercise it vigorously. Minnesota and Dakota, it should be observed, have not been alone in agitating stricter railroad regulation. The subject was prominently before at least a dozen of the Legislatures of 1885, and

the famous Reagan Bill for the regulation of inter-State railroad traffic engrossed Congress during the best weeks of the winter session. The disposition everywhere is to go just as far in restricting the transportation companies as can be gone without serious injury to everybody concerned. Railroad law is becoming very bulky and complicated throughout the United States. The rash "granger" laws of more than a decade ago firmly established the principle and the right of extreme State supervision and the different commonwealths have ever since been amending and altering, but constantly enlarging, their railroad codes.

Those loans

Many other Western laws reveal the agricultural character of society. In 1876 and 1877 the grasshoppers ruined the wheat crops of Minnesota, and reduced many farmers to a condition of distress. The Legislature accordingly made profuse "seed-grain loans" to individuals, to be refunded gradually in the form of special taxes. have been a subject of legislation ever since. Bureaus of crop and weather reports, of agriculture, and of agricultural statistics, for the benefit of the farmers, are quite generally maintained. Agricultural fairs, central and local, are subsidized from the State Treasury, and the last Minnesota Legislature appropriated a hundred thousand dollars for the equipments of a State fair-ground. The exemption laws of Western States and Territories are so framed as to favor the farmers. In Minnesota the farm buildings and eighty acres of land constitute a homestead exemption, which is safe from all attachment and execution processes. In addition, the exemption laws reserve an amount of household belongings, farm utensils, live stock, and the like, which is worth from fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars. In Dakota these exemption laws are much more "liberal." They except from legal process a still larger area of land, and an amount of live stock and farm belongings greatly in excess of what the average farmer owns. In all the western agricultural States and Territories such dishonorable exemption laws exist, enabling the farmer to evade the payment of debts. The provisions made for persons engaged in other pursuits are

not nearly so "liberal." These laws interfering to prevent the ordinary collection of debts are to be condemned, both for their moral and economic effects. They injure Western credit, and affect unfavorably the rate of interest. Whereupon the farmers again interpose, fix a lawful interest rate, and punish usury with forfeiture. Such exemption and usury laws prevailing everywhere throughout the West, and enacted solely for the benefit of the farming class, are an instance of selfish interference which overreaches itself; for their operation is directly detrimental to the farmers.

Southern Minnesota has outlived the wheat-growing and crop-farming period, and is engaging in the more profitable pursuit of dairy farming. The region is peculiarly adapted to butter and cheese-making, and the industry has developed marvellously within a few years, with large expectations for the future. The dairy farmers have now sought and secured the protection and patronage of the State. A new bureau is created, manned by a State Dairy Commissioner and his subordinate officers. The dairy laws take the guise of regulations for the protection of the public health against impure and adulterated milk and butter; but their real object is to protect the butter-makers and great "creamery" establishments from the competition of the artificial product known as butterine. This article is manufactured on a vast scale in Chicago, its principal ingredients being hog's lard, cottonseed oil, and genuine butter. Experts have pronounced it perfectly healthful, and desirable as a cheap substitute for butter. But its sale greatly affects the price of "honest" butter. A single Chicago firm manufactures a larger quantity of it than the total butter product of the great dairy State of Iowa, and it undersells real butter even throughout the dairy region. It is estimated that four or five million pounds of it were sold as butter in Minnesota in 1884. The new law of 1885 banishes this artificial product from the State. It also provides a series of minute regulations governing butter-making and the management of creameries" (butter factories).

The extensive cattle business of the

West is another department of rural industry which has grown into such prominence as to have claimed and received the patronage and regulation of the State. In all the States and Territories of the grazing belt, which stretches from Manitoba to the Rio Grande, the codes of cattle laws are growing in bulk and in variety of detail. The cattle men were predominant in the last Territorial Legislature of Montana, and the result is a formidable array of new laws touching every feature of the cattle industry. These laws depart as widely from laissez-faire ideas as can well be imagined. Nor is cattle legislation confined to States in the distinctive grazing belt. Stock-raising has assumed large importance in the agricultural States of the Mississippi valley, and "Bureaus of Animal Industry," manned by "State veterinarians" and their subordinate officers, are coming into vogue. Cattle quarantine laws, and enactments which provide for the stamping out of contagious diseases, pay small courtesy to the rights and wishes of individual owners, but employ heroic remedies with a minimum of ceremony. It might easily be supposed that the nomadic cattlekings of the Western plains, whose personal independence in some directions seems to be carried beyond the limits of the crudest forms of political society, would resent State interference in their business; but, on the contrary, they invoke it. They are not satisfied until they have secured statutory confirmation of all their customs and usages. Their brands and modes of identification are registered and protected by the State. The statute-books of Montana or Texas reveal the importance of cattleraising, just as the laws of California bear the impress of a mining community, and those of Iowa betray the handiwork of farmers legislating for farmers.

The vast pine forests of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota for years have constituted the largest source of the lumber supply of the United States. Perhaps few persons besides those immediately interested are aware to what extent the laws of these three States have encompassed the logging and lumbering business. The States are divided into lumbering districts, and each district is supplied with its corps of State

inspectors,"scalers," etc. Not a log is floated down stream from the woods to the saw-mill for which it is destined without official cognizance. The technical details of these logging codes it is not necessary to recite; the mere fact that such laws and such supervision exists is all that is required for our present purpose.

The insurance business is conducted under strict regulations in most of the Western States. The State Insurance Commissioner is an important officer in Minnesota. New laws extend his supervision beyond the regular insurance companies to all the numerous societies and local organizations which practice co-operative insurance. A special tax on insurance companies yields a consider able revenue. In general there is discoverable a tinge of hostility in insurance legislation as in railroad legislation. In Wisconsin the fire insurance companies are compelled to pay the full amount of a policy in case of a total loss, irrespective of the actual extent of the damage. Such a law was crowded through the last Minnesota Legislature, but vetoed by the Governor. A Southwestern State and a New England State have greatly embarrassed themselves by similar enactments. Savings banks in Minnesota are organized under a peculiarly rigid system of laws, and are subject to the inspection of a useful State officer known as the Public Examiner, who also supervises the book-keeping of State and county officers, and scrutinizes the accounts of public institutions. A State Oil Inspector derives a handsome salary from inspection of the illuminating oils sold in the State. A State Board of Medical Examiners regulates the practice of medicine, examining and admitting all new practitioners. A new law creates a State Board of Pharmacy for the examination of druggists and compounding clerks. The law prescribes wholesomely severe requirements. Another new law regulates the practice of dentistry, and creates an additional State Board. These laws were enacted at the instance of the physicians, druggists, and dentists respectively, who doubtless had their own interest no less than the general welfare in view. Unfortunately for the public, the laws do not apply retroactively.

An

Among the miscellaneous instances of regulation should be included the fish and game laws, which are minute and exhaustive. A State Board of Inspectors for Steam Boilers in Minnesota licenses stationary engineers and carries out an elaborate statute which regulates the testing and operating of steam engines and boilers. Among the enactments of the last Minnesota Legislature is one which fixes the maximum proportion of toll to be exacted by a custom mill for grinding wheat or other grain ; one which declares dogs to be personal property, and another which sets forth the aggravating circumstances under which a farmer may slay his neighbor's dog with impunity; another regulating the business of operating telegraph lines; one which provides for the collection of criminal statistics; one prescribing in detail the character of the passenger waiting-rooms which all railway companies must maintain at their stopping places in villages, towns, and cities, and another providing for the storage and disposal of unclaimed baggage and freight; another to prevent fraud in the use of false brands, stamps, labels, or trade-marks; one to protect all citizens in their civil and legal rights" and prescribing penalties for discrimination against individuals in inns, public conveyances, barber shops, and the like, and another to regulate "offensive trades and employments. And still the enumeration is not complete, for my object is only to indicate the drift of legislation with respect to the restricting and supervising of various business pursuits, and not to supply a catalogue of regulative laws. And such regulation in Minnesota may be deemed fairly representative of that in other Western States.

In no part of the world, perhaps, is State interference in behalf of the public health less required by circumstances than in the North-western portion of the United States. And yet such interference is quite as searching as in more populous regions and less salubrious climates. New laws have given Minnesota a more stringent system of health regulations than exists in any other of the United States. Besides the State Board of Health, which has extensive functions, every township, borough,