§ 5. Public inspection of standards and of foods. The determination and testing of standards of weights and measures has long been a function of government. English laws of the Middle Ages forbade false measures and the sale of defective goods, and provided for the inspection of markets in the cities. Usually, the self-interest of the purchaser is the best means of insuring the quality of goods; but personal inspection by each buyer frequently is difficult and time-consuming, requiring special and unusual knowledge of the products and special costly testing apparatus. The states and the nation undertake in some cases, therefore, to set minimum standards of quality, and to enforce them by governmental inspection. Government coinage had its origin in this need.

This policy is applied, however, mainly to commodities affecting health; its application to art products, except to protect the morality of the community, would be difficult or unwise. Recent legislation in many lands and in all of the American states has developed greatly the policy of insuring the purity or the safety of many articles consumed in the home; notable is the Federal Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. The federal law levying a tax on oleomargarine, however, was designed as protective legislation in the interest of the farmer. Public regulation and inspection sometimes raises the price, but the cost is small compared with the convenience and the benefits resulting to the citizen.

§ 6. Charity, and control of vice. The public relief of the defective classes, insane, feeble-minded, and paupers, is a part of the social protective policy. The public interest undoubtedly is served by having these suffering classes systematically relieved, but the extent and nature of the provision are questions ever in debate. Still more debated is temperance legislation, both as to licensing and as to prohibiting the liquor traffic. Nowhere is the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor treated quite like the traffic in most other goods, because it is recognized that the public interest is affected in a different way. While it is beyond question that society should protect itself and its innocent members against the drunkard, it is more doubtful whether it owes to the man, for his sake, protection against his own blunders. Not even the gods can save the stupid. Temperance legislation is strongest in its social aspect. The opponent of it usually champions the individualist view; its partizans uphold, in varying degrees, the social view.

5 See Vol. I, pp. 293 and 303.

Similar questions arise regarding lotteries, gambling, betting, and horse-racing. When a man backs a worthless horse against the field, money probably is transferred from the stupider to the shrewder party. The philosopher may say that the sooner a prodigal and his money are parted the better ; but the broken gambler remains a burden and a threat to honest society. Gambling, lotteries, and speculation cause embezzlement, crime, unhappy homes, and wrecked lives.6 Here are to be found with difficulty the true boundaries between ethics and expediency. A busybody despotism may protect the fool, but it thereby helps to perpetuate and multiply his folly; yet, if the fool is left alone, he too often is a plague to the wise and the virtuous.

§ 7. City growth and the housing problem. In 1790, of our population only 3 per cent lived in cities of more than 8000 inhabitants; in 1900 the percentage was 33. Then the largest city (Philadelphia) numbered 50,000; in 1910 the largest city (New York) numbered 5,500,000; that is, one hundred and ten times as large as the largest one hundred and twenty years before. The total number of persons living in cities of 8000 had increased in more than double that ratio. In 1920, for the first time, the population classed as urban (in places with 2500 population or more) exceeded that classed as rural, being 51.4 per cent of the total.

6 See ch. 12, § 2.

The rapid growth of urban communities brought many evils. Considered in their more material aspects, nearly all of these are summed up in the term, "housing problem." As population grows denser in cities, land rises in value, yards and gardens narrow and then disappear, light, sun, and air are shut out, and cleanliness, decency, and home life become more difficult and, for many, impossible. The residents gradually group themselves in districts corresponding to their economic incomes, and the poorer parts of the population become tenement dwellers in the neighborhood of factories or become segregated in "slum" districts of unsanitary and dilapidated houses.

§ 8. Good housing legislation. Two policies are open under these conditions. The one, always followed for a time, is to leave individual self-interest unguided to solve the problem. If the tenant agrees to rent a disease-breeding house, he is the first to suffer. The interests of investors, it is said, will supply as good a house as each tenant can pay for. The other policy now adopted is to set a minimum standard of sanitation and comfort in respect to plans, lighting, materials, and proportion of lots to be covered, to which standard all builders and owners must attain. Complying with the legal requirements, they are left free to collect whatever rent they can get. As one bad building may bring down the rent of all on the street, such legislation may sometimes be in the interest of the body of landowners as against the selfish desires of some individuals. Mainly, however, the regulation is in the interest of the tenants and of society as a whole, and against the immediate interests of the landlords. The rents from slum property are threatened; hence the strong opposition always manifested against tenement-house legislation by some landlords, architects, and contractors, who fight it as an interference with their interests and as a confiscation of their property. It is not unlikely that good housing legislation has the effect of making rents too high for some poorer tenants and driving them into the country. But this result is not so undesirable. Moreover, the control and inspection of housing conditions has in a few states been made state-wide to reach even the "country slums," which lately have been recognized to exist. Enlightened sentiment to-day favors efforts to destroy the breeding-places of disease, misery, and crime, no matter where they may be.

Property-owners are in many communities limited as to height of buildings, appearance, and, by the zoning system, even the uses for which houses may be erected in any district. American cities have still much to learn in this regard from the example of many European cities, which have developed the art of city planning with wonderful results in beauty of landscape and of architecture, in practical economy for business, and in the health and welfare of the mass of the people.