Legislation against Speculation and Gambling in the Forms of Trade -Dewey, book review..... Preparation and Contest of Wills-Remsen, book review... Principles of the English Law of Contract-Anson, book review............ 225 289 216 71 PRESIDENT OF THE PHI DELTA PHI CLUB OF NEW YORK Has the State ever a clear duty to lend a hand to aid those who are obviously at a disadvantage, in struggling with the forces of modern industry? Under our fundamental law and the principles declared in our Constitution, can our Legislatures and Courts recognize not only the facts of existing industrial inequality between men, but a duty to protect by law framed to meet new conditions the weaker against the stronger? When individual action alone cannot secure equalization of the conditions of competition, and where that failure is resulting in misery and distress, may the law intervene to protect the weak from the tyranny of the strong? Are the handicaps of life to be questions solely for the individual, or are they at times and under special circumstances to be questions for the State, itself to grapple with, and if not to solve, at least to create conditions under which the individual may solve them for himself? These are difficult questions which our Courts with increasing frequency are being asked to answer, when required to determine the validity of laws, which our Legislatures and Congress are yearly enacting, laws regulating or fixing the conditions under which industry shall be carried on; limiting the hours of labor of women and children and men as well, in over-competi 1 An address before the 13th Session of the New York State Bar Association. tive employments; laws aimed at reducing unnecessary dangers to life and limb in dangerous trades, or dangers to health, in unhealthful occupations; laws which, by increasing the employer's responsibility, seek to urge him to new diligence in the protection of his employes; laws which, in a multitude of ways, aim to control or regulate, as special necessity may dictate, the processes of industry, to remove conditions which press too heavily upon the overburdened, and which, uncontrolled, sap vitality and destroy or shorten life. Our fundamental law has, for one of its principles, that of equality—that before the law, men are equal in rights, privileges and legal capacities. It has, for another principle, individual freedom, the right of the individual, uncontrolled by any arbitrary trammels of the State, to pursue any proper calling and to contract with others, in relation to that calling. The liberty to pursue such calling is a property right, is a part of the liberty and property which shall not be taken away, without due process of law. History would seem to show that for the first seventy-five years, at least, of our national life, individual liberty was the dominant note. We were opening a new world. In it there were apparently innumerable opportunities for individual enterprise and initiative. Our national life began, moreover, with greater industrial equality than had before existed in any other country. The industrial revolution had not yet begun, when American independence was declared. We were then an agricultural people, for England, hoping to keep us a market for her manufactures, had forbidden the export of machinery to her colonies. The spinning machinery of Arkwright was not brought to us until after the war. The power loom was not invented until 1785. There was not a factory in the United States, when the Constitution was adopted. The artisan was his own master and worked with his own tools, or on simple machinery, which, by moderate savings, he himself might own. There were no great fortunes in the modern sense, no great corporate organizations of wealth, no factory system. Is it to be wondered at, that, beginning thus with such a marked general condition of industrial independence, amid a wealth of natural |