village and city is required to have its local Board of Health, organized in a manner prescribed by statute. Thorough sanitary inspections are made obligatory, as are also periodical written reports from every Local Board to the State Board. The Local Board is empowered to issue any by-law or order which it deems proper, and these mandates are as binding upon the community or the individual to whom they are addressed as the ordinance of a City Council. Violation or neglect of such rules is made a misdemeanor punishable by fine and imprisonment. This arbitrary power to invade private premises and issue peremptory orders in the interest of the public health, is not hedged about or limited in any way; and it presents a striking example of the growth of State interference. In Minnesota, the State Board of Health is charged with the execution of stringent measures to prevent the spread of diseases among cattle, horses and other domestic animals, and also has new duties under a statute enacted to prevent the pollution of rivers and sources of water-supply.

For obvious reasons, legislation dealing with the employment of labor and protecting the interests of wage-workers is not yet very extensive in the Western States. The accessibility of cheap and excellent lands furnishes the best possible protection for labor. As the towns grow in size, however, and as manufacturing industries develop, there is observable a new demand for labor laws. Public Bureaus of Labor Statistics are becoming common in the Western States, and their utility is deemed great by intelligent workingmen. Lien laws protecting wages are on the statutebooks of all the States. The employment of women and children is regulated. Ten hours is made a legal day's work in the absence of contract stipulations. A new Minnesota law brings employment bureaus under surveillance, much to the satisfaction of working

men as subjecting them to a degrading competition with the labor of convicts. This reform will undoubtedly be accomplished at a future session, the great State of New York having led the way. Minnesota laws contain excellent provisions for the organization of Co-operative Establishments, Building Associations, and the like. The simple truth is that there is no legislation which workingmen in the United States may not secure, if they really unite in desiring it. In Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, Montana and Wyoming, also in the two southern States of Georgia and Mississippi, statutes render railway companies liable for injuries received by employés, and no contract restricting such liability is binding. In Rhode Island such a law is made applicable to steamboats as well as to railroads. It cannot be many years before there will prevail throughout the United States a system of Employers' Liability Laws much more strict than the English Act of 1880. The force of the English law is practically nullified by the permission which is given of setting aside the liability by specific contract. It is worthy of note, certainly, that these American laws which restrict the freedom of contract in order the better to protect labor against capital, have their origin in those very western commonwealths which have been thought so jealous of State interference and so firmly wedded to the doctrine of free contract.

The peculiar pride of every Western State is its public-school system. The high taxes which poor and sparsely settled frontier communities cheerfully pay for the maintenance of free public schools are simply astonishing when all circumstances are considered. For it is a mistake to suppose that the school lands set aside by Congress in each township for a permanent school-fund yield a large proportion of the total school expenditures. Probably nowhere else in the world does the State so completely, and with so unanimous consent, assume the work of education as in the States and Territories west of the Mississippi river. The magnificent young Territory of Dakota, practically an unbroken wilderness in 1870, and reasonably expecting to have a population of nearly one million by the census of 1890,

has not only provided itself with firstclass elementary schools for all its children, but has established several ambitious normal schools, and has founded two or three collegiate establishments known in western parlance as "universities." It is to maintain in the Black Hills mining region a school of metallurgy and mining engineering. It will of course have its agricultural college, with experimental farms adjoining. All the Western States emphatically repudiate laissez faire doctrines in matters of education. Arguments are occasionally made against the free high-schools, maintained by taxation in every village, town, and city. But the high-school is strongly sustained by public opinion.

The impropriety of a State University is also sometimes urged, but without avail. Connected with these State Universities are generally free professional schools of law and medicine. All the States maintain free normal schools for the education and training of teachers, and each has an agricultural college with a several years' literary and scientific course. Not content with providing the elementary schools, Minnesota has promulgated a new law making attendance compulsory. It is entitled "An Act requiring the Education of all Healthy Children, and making it obligatory upon parents to send children between the ages of nine and sixteen to some public or private school for at least twelve weeks in every year, or to provide equivalent instruction. Since the proportion of illiteracy is extremely small, and the schools are popular and always well attended, the necessity for this compulsory law is not apparent. In Minnesota the common-school textbooks are prescribed and furnished by the central authorities. Teachers' institutes, generally lasting several weeks, are annually held in each county at public expense in all the Western States. State historical societies exist under public auspices, and are maintained by appropriations. In Minnesota and in various other States, the educational code includes a law authorizing free public libraries, maintained by local taxation. Expensive natural history and geological surveys may also properly be grouped with the educational undertakings of the Western States.

Those writers who see in the maintenance of public eleemosynary institutions such thwarting of Nature's beneficent law of the survival of the fittest as menaces the physical and moral virility of the race, have reason to feel much solicitude for the Anglo-Saxon commonwealths of the Far West. Nowhere in the world are State charities conducted more elaborately. Minnesota, in her two very large hospitals for the insane, provides comfortable accommodation and skilled medical and sanitary treatment for a larger proportion of the mentally disordered persons within her boundaries than are similarly cared for under any other government. And the recent Legislature has provided for a third large asylum. Iowa and other Western States are scarcely inferior to Minnesota in their provisions for the insane. A large and most admirably conducted State institution for the blind, and another for deaf mutes, are occasion of some pardonable pride to the people of Minnesota. The educational and industrial features of these two establishments are noteworthy. And the other States generally have like institutions. Still another singularly successful Minnesota establishment is a large home and school for the care and instruction of feeble-minded children. There are State reform schools for boys and girls, to which juvenile offenders and miscreants are committed, and which are a combination of the home, the school, the workshop, and the prison. The recent Minnesota Legislature has established a new charitable institution under the somewhat misleading name of the "State Public School. It is to be a home on a large scale for dependent and neglected children, its inmates to be received between the ages of three and ten. Its avowed object is to prevent the making of criminal and vicious characters. It will collect children from every part of the State, and so far as its capacity will permit, it will gather all the orphans and waifs from the county alms-houses. As opportunities are found, it will place the children in good families. While they remain in the school, they will have model care and instruction. The reform schools are for an older class who have become incorrigible, or have actually committed.

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crime. Such a school for neglected children already exists in two Western States, and there is reason to believe that the plan will find still other imitators. Besides the officers and board of management belonging to each of these public institutions, and rendering detailed annual reports to the Governor of the State, there is a general supervisory body, entitled the State Board of Corrections and Charities," whose duty it is to inspect the asylums and penal establishments of the State. Its supervision extends also to county jails and alms-houses, city and village lock-ups, and all local institutions of a caritative, reformatory, or penal sort. The board The board is composed of intelligent and philanthropic gentlemen, who serve without pay, excepting that their secretary, who is on constant duty and is an expert, is a salaried officer. They aid county officers by giving advice as to approved and recent plans for building jails and poor-houses, and in a variety of ways they promote efficiency and economy in the dealing of the State with its delinquent and dependent classes.

Legislation intended to enforce certain standards of morality is perhaps more prolific and vigorous in the United States, and particularly in the Western States, than anywhere else in the world. Society is comparatively homogeneous, and moral and religious sentiments have great influence. The disposition to force the moral ideas of the majority upon the whole society is well-nigh irresistible. The Western treatment of the Liquor Question promptly suggests itself by way of illustration. The States of Iowa and Kansas are engaged in a difficult attempt to enforce laws absolutely forbidding the manufacture, sale, and transportation (and virtually, therefore, forbidding the use) of every kind of alcoholic beverage.

The Prohibition movement has not been successful in any other Western States. Illinois, Missouri, and Nebraska have "compromised with evil" by enacting high license laws. The effect is certainly good. The annual license fee of 500 dollars in Chicago (in Omaha the fee is 1,000 dollars) has reduced the number of drinking-places; and the incidental features of the license legislation have brought the traffic under betNEW SERIES.-VOL. XLVI., No. 1

ter control, practically stopped the sale to children and persons under legal age, and mitigated in many ways the vitiating effects of the sale and use of alcoholic stimulants. Moreover, the license fees furnish an important source of revenue. With all their economic benefits, however, it is manifest that these license laws exist in obedience to a moral sentiment. The best people regard the liquor traffic as depraving, and they enact the license laws and other regulations because these are the most stringent laws they are able to secure. No laissez-faire doctrine, or jealousy for the freedom of the individual, checks them in the least. in the least. They would wipe the obnoxious traffic out of existence in an instant if they had the power. Not being able to abolish it, they fine it as heavily as possible under the guise of licensing it.

Laws against Sabbath-breaking, though not rigorously enforced, are found on the statute-books of all the States, and are almost Puritanic in their restrictions. So far as local public sentiment is in accord, the laws are obeyed, and beyond that point they are a dead letter. Nobody attempts to force his neighbor to keep the Sabbath under penalty of law, but in deference to Christian ideas, which in America are scrupulous on this point of Sabbathkeeping, the rigorous laws are maintained. The penal codes fairly bristle with laws defining offences against decency and chastity, and providing heavy penalties for their violation. Lotteries of every description, including "raffles" at church fairs and the like, are prohibited under frightful penalties. In Minnesota it is made a misdemeanor under the penal code lately adopted even to publish an account of a lottery, no matter when or where it has been conducted. It is a crime to give away a lottery ticket, or to give information as to where a ticket may be obtained. All forms of gambling are also prohibited. Prize-fighting is a crime, and any person who in any way abets or encourages such a fight or gives countenance to it, is an offender against the law. Persons going outside of the State with the intention of engaging in a pugilistic contest or in any wise encouraging or abetting it, are subject to the penalties

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of the law whenever they return within the State's jurisdiction. A series of regulations, under the general title of 'cruelty to animals," in the new Minnesota penal code, contains a number of extreme provisions.

Perhaps none of these enactments, however, so well illustrates the disposition of the American people to make the law the handmaid of private morality as one which has now been framed in Minnesota prohibiting the sale of obscene, immoral and indecent publications and pictures. Not only does it proscribe the palpably vicious and obscene, but it is designed also to drive from the newsstands and book-stores all that is grossly vulgar and offensive to good taste. Any person commits a crime who, in the words of this statute, "sells, lends, gives away, or shows, or has in his possession with intent to sell or give away or show, or advertises or otherwise offers for loan, gift or distribution, any book, pamphlet, magazine, newspaper or other printed paper devoted to the publication, or principally made up of criminal news, police reports, or accounts of criminal deeds, or pictures and stories of deeds of bloodshed, lust or crime." The law was enacted at the instance of gentlemen who have organized themselves into a Society for the Preven tion of Vice," and their agents prosecute under it. In the hands of indiscreet and fanatical persons such a law might become the instrument of a censorship which would offend our Anglo-American traditions touching the rights and liberties of the press. The statute is voluminous and exhaustive, and the clauses quoted above merely indicate its tenor. Its standard of morals and literature is beyond the average sense of the community, and its enforcement is proving difficult. It is an almost verbatim copy of the much-discussed Comstock legislation of New York. Its educational effects are salutary, but the average jury will not convict its violators.

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Montana has just furnished an instructive illustration of the American disposition to rectify and improve pub lic morals by statute. Its rough frontier society, made up of miners and herdsmen, is much addicted to gambling; nothing has been more open and undisguised. The last legislature enact

ed severe laws prohibiting all forms of gaming. Such legislation, of course, indicates an improving condition of society and an awakening of moral consciousness; but it may well be doubted whether laws so far in advance of the general practice of the people have any utility. Bills which fail of passage are sometimes as indicative of tendencies as are those which become laws. Skating rinks for a year or two attained a wonderful popularity throughout the United States, and many good people regarded their moral effects as pernicious. A Bill was introduced in the Minnesota Legislature of 1885 forbidding persons of opposite sex to skate together, or even to be present at the same hour on the rink floor, and it actually found considerable support. Another Bill proposed to license drinkers, and provided that no person should be permitted to use intoxicants or to purchase liquors of any kind without having first obtained a public license. And this novel scheme was not without its group of advocates.

The State laws confer a wide range of powers upon local Governments; and no better evidence of the tendency to extend municipal functions could be adduced than the rapid and enormous growth of local public debts, and the constant upward tendency of municipal tax-rates. The length of this article will not permit a statement in detail of the various activities which Western local and city Governments have assumed; but certainly such a summary would open the eyes of those who have supposed that in the vigorous and somewhat crude new commonwealths of America the laissez-faire doctrine finds practical exemplification. Nowhere is the disposition stronger to accomplish desired results through the agency of boards, bureaus, and departments of the municipal Government than in these young Western cities. stone sidewalks, costly sewers, great bridges, systems of public water-works, elaborate fire departments, street illumination, the police system, public parks and boulevards, free public libraries and reading-rooms, magnificent commonschool buildings and conspicuous public buildings of all kinds, market-places, hospitals, workhouses, almshouses, re

Paved streets,

formatories, orphanages, cemeteries-all these and sundry other things require large forces of officials, and call for princely revenues. Buildings are erected by official permit, and under official supervision, subject to minute directions contained in city building ordinances. Restraints and regulations affect almost everything imaginable. Public morals and public health come under close official scrutiny. Boards and inspectorships are legion. Licenses are required for the pursuit of various avocations. The spirit of regulation and interference manifests itself at every point.

This statement of facts has not been made in a spirit of hostility to Government regulation. I have endeavored to describe impartially the legislation of the North-west. While it must be conceded that very many of these undertakings, restrictions, and interferences on the part of the Government are advantageous and commendable, no one who accepts the statement of facts will deny the deplorable tendency to reckless, selfish, and strained employments of the State prerogative. Shall the laissezfaire theory of government, therefore, be yet more vigorously expounded as an antidote? I can only reply that the theory is already accepted by these legislators. Mr. Herbert Spencer would be surprised if he knew how many were his disciples and admirers among the lawyers and law-makers of the Western States. But they find the à priori doctrines they have imbibed so grotesquely foreign to the facts and conditions about them, that they are unable to establish any connection between their political philosophy and their practical work in building States and shaping legislation. The effect of the laissez-faire dogma is so altogether demoralizing that it must be held to a considerable degree responsible for the reckless and ill-considered applications of the State power.

Failing as a guide to its adherents in matters of practical legislation, it leaves them without rudder or compass. But the conclusion does not follow that there are no general views of the State and its functions which would have a tendency to make the Government less reckless in its assumptions and interferences. I am of opinion that nothing else could have so wholesome and so restraining

a

an effect upon these Western legislators as a thorough going conversion to the doctrines which radically oppose the laissez-faire school. What I suggest is a new application of the homœopathic theory of curing like with like. The American Economic Association new body including as members a majority of the best political and economic students of the country-frankly repudiates laissez-faire, and publishes as the first in its "Statement of Principles": -"We regard the State as an agency whose positive assistance is one of the indispensable conditions of human progress. Let this doctrine be accepted without qualification. Let it be understood that it is within the legitimate province of the State to do anything and everything. I am convinced that the result of an emancipation from the laissez-faire bugbear, which now exerts so unfortunate an influence, would be a more careful and scientific law-making. Each new proposition would have to stand or fall on its sheer merits. Statistical and comparative study would be accorded a higher value. The delusion that Government is a that Government is a "necessary evil," the fallacy that social co-operation in the form of State activity is an emasculating "paternalism," and the doctrinaire assumption that the State should be restricted to a very few negative functions-these all having been swept away, there would appear at once the most intelligible and practical reasons why good judgment and caution should be exercised in adding to the undertakings of the State. The possibilities of novel legislation having been apparently increased, responsibility would be increased in more than like measure. Legislation would be subjected to keener scrutiny, business conservatism would have freer and more potent operation as a check, and there would be a disposition to elect abler and safer law-makers. Hobby-riders, fanatics, and self-seeking special interests would have greater difficulty in getting their foolish or objectionable measures into the statute-books. It would be recognized as the business of Government to do those things which, under the circumstances existing for any given period, it could do wisely and well; and it would be held the business of legislators to decide, in the light