City growth and new-social problems.

1. Under modern conditions many laws restricting free competition are required to secure the health and convenience of the citizens. The rapid growth of city populations has brought new social and economic problems. The friction in social relations is greater when men are crowded together. In 1790, three per cent. only of our population lived in cities of over eight thousand; today the percentage is thirty-three. Then the city dwellers numbered one hundred and thirty-one thousand; now they number twenty-five millions. Then there were but six cities of eight thousand or over; now there are five hundred and forty-five. Then the largest city (Philadelphia) numbered fifty thousand persons; today the largest city (New York) numbers three millions. Many laws are survivals suited only to the older rural conditions. In London, these problems were first forced into prominence, and a law passed after the great fire of 1665 to regulate the rebuilding of houses, streets, sidewalks, and sewers, foreshadowed alike the American law of special assessments and the modern tenement-house legislation. A mass of laws wise and foolish has resulted from the attempt to meet the new conditions. The laws of nuisance and of sanitation have been rapidly changing.

Need of social regulation.

Why not leave such subjects to individuals? It is for the interest of every one that his back yard should not be a place of noisome smells and disagreeable sights. [But men are at times strangely obstinate, selfish, and neglectful, and through one man's fault a whole community may suffer. The refusal of one man to put a sewer in front of his house would block the improvement of a whole street. The obstinacy of one may bring an epidemic upon an entire city. There must be a plan, and by law the will of the majority must be imposed upon the unsocial few. Where voluntas cooperation fails, compulsory cooperation often is necessary. Thus health laws, tax laws, and improvement laws regulate many of the acts of citizens, limit the use of property, and compel men to a course against their own wishes and judg-, ments. The justification for these limitations on the right of private property, on free choice of the individual, on "free competition," must be found in the social result secured.

2. Tenement-house legislation is an important recent expression of this social protective policy. As city population grows denser, land increases in value, and the evils of bad housing threaten the welfare of the great majority of city dwellers. Light, sun, air are shut out, and cleanliness, decency, and home life are made impossible. Two policies are open to the public. It may be left to private enterprise 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, to which all builders and owners must attain. Property owners are no longer left free to determine plans, height of building, proportion of lot built on, lighting, materials, and workmanship. Complying with the legal requirements, they are left quite free to collect whatever rent they can get. Such legislation is partly in the interest of the body of landowners as against the selfish desires of some individuals. One bad building may bring down the rent of all on the street. Partly, however, the regulation is in the interest of the tenants and of society as a whole, and against that of the landlord. 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 bitterly as an interference with their interests and as a confiscation of their property. It is not quite certain how marked will be the effect of this policy in making the rents too high for the poorer tenants and driving them into the country. But this result, predicted by the enemies of the policy, is not so undesirable, and the enlightened sentiment of the public today favors all efforts to destroy the breeding-places of disease, misery, and crime.

Tenement-house laws in cities.

Interests affetcted.

Public inspection of goods used in the homes.

3. Laws forbid adulteration of products for domestic use and provide for public inspection. 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. Recent legislation in many lands has developed much further the policy of insuring the purity or the safety of articles consumed in the home. The oleomargarin law passed by Congress was, however, designed as protective legislation in the interest of the farmer. Usually, the self-interest of the purchaser is the best safeguard for 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 state undertakes, therefore, to set a minimum standard of quality, and to apply it by the economical method of social cooperation. This policy extends only to staple products and to a comparatively few articles. It would be impossible as well as unwise to apply it to art products, except to protect the morality of the community. This inspection sometimes raises the price, but the evils are small compared with the convenience and the benefits resulting to the citizen. He is assured that the article he buys is of standard quality, and if he wishes a cheaper quality there is no law to prevent his adulterating it for his own use.

State support of education.

4. Other kinds of social amelioration undertaken by the state, through free, compulsory education, charity, and temperance legislation, are likewise interferences with competition and freedom of contract. Many of these are so customary that they are not thought of in this light. Schools are productive enterprises, education is industry, and the supply of this service is always in large measure undertaken by private enterprise and could be left entirely to it. But free elementary education is the established policy, and is no longer debatable in America and France. In England the policy is still debated, much as is that of public ownership of trolley lines in America. One by one the states are passing compulsory education laws, and thus interfering still further with the freedom of the individual. The affection of parents can in most cases be trusted to provide for the education of children, but when family affection fails, the child and the state are the victims of the resulting ignorance, crime, and pauperism. State support of higher education is more in dispute. It is a universally accepted view that social welfare requires a more generous support for higher education than could be secured if it were sold at a competitive price; but while in eastern America its provision is left mainly to private gifts, in the West and South it is undertaken largely by the state. The justification of this policy must be found, not in the benefit to the particular students, but in the benefit diffused throughout the commonwealth by the encouragement of science, arts, and letters.

The system of public relief for the defective classes of blind, deaf, insane, feeble-minded, and paupers, are examples 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 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 partisans uphold, in varying degrees, the social view.

Public charity.

Temperance legislation.

Other laws to protect public morals.

Similar questions arise regarding lotteries, gambling, betting, horse-racing, etc. 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 fool 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. 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.

Usury laws as social legislation.

5. Usury laws are found almost universally in civilized lands. By usury was formerly meant any payment for the loan of goods or money; now it means only excessive payments. In former times moralists and lawmakers were opposed to all usury or interest. Most loans were made in times of distress. The sources of loanable capital and the chances of profitable investment were fewer in the past than today. For the last four centuries there has been on the question of usury a gradual change of opinion, beginning in the commercial centers and most rapid in the countries with more developed industry. A moderate rate of interest is now everywhere permitted; but in all but a few communities the rate that can be collected is limited by law, and penalties more or less severe are imposed on the usurious lender. It has been noted in another connection that usury laws are practically evaded in a number of ways within the letter of the law. Many writers maintain that usury laws do more harm than good even to the borrower, whom they are designed to protect. In a developed credit economy, where a regular money-market exists, they are superfluous, to say the least, as most loans are made below the legal rate. Such laws, however, have a partial justification. In a small money-market they to some extent protect the weak borrower at the moment of distress from the rapacity of the would-be usurer. Their utility is disappearing, but in simpler industrial conditions usury laws are fruits of the social conscience, a recognition of the duty to protect the weaker citizen in the period of his direst need.