II.
Since Boyleau impressed the corporations into the police and fiscal service of a military despotism, thus converting agencies of order, industry, and humanity into engines of greed and oppression, the conditions of society and the thoughts and feelings of enlightened races have been revolutionized. A state of anarchy no longer exists. War has ceased to be the chief occupation of men. Their ambition is not to murder and plunder their fellows. Devoted to the arts of peace, they have come more and more to exhibit the manners and sentiments of civilized life. There is therefore no occasion for the institutions that feudal confusion and anarchy made needful. A powerful police organization restrains the robbers and murderers. An elaborate system of courts investigates crimes, both great and small, settles disputes between the contentious, and seeks to maintain the rights of the simple and weak against the cunning and strong. Asylums, hospitals, refuges, homes, and charitable societies without number provide for the sick, the aged, the destitute. Education in all the fields of human knowledge, fitting men and women for every position in life, can be had in the universities, colleges, academies, technical schools, and public schools, both primary and secondary, that cover the land. Social and religious organizations minister to every conceivable social and religious need. No obloquy is attached to any honest pursuit. Character and ability have come more and more to be the test of social worth. The great men of the world are not the warriors; they are the captains of industry, the discoverers in science, the thinkers, the scholars, the artists, the philanthropists, the statesmen.
Yet it is proposed to introduce into a society like this—one based not upon war, but upon peace and industry—the institutions that finished their proper work centuries ago;[1] that survived, in consequence of their alliance with the state, their usefulness so long that they became a curse to man and an obstruction to social and industrial progress. Not only is it proposed, but, as already intimated, steps have actually been taken, to convert the plumbers, the undertakers, the barbers, the horseshoers, the opticians, the dentists, the druggists, the stationary engineers, and other trades and professions into close organizations like those that once covered Europe.[2] Legislation has been had in several
- ↑ Pigeonneau, vol. i, p. 176.
- ↑ Since this was put in type my attention has been called to a New York State law, enacted last year, for the regulation of "public accountants," who may be regarded simply as glorified bookkeepers. It provides that any person "over twenty-one years of age and of good moral character," who shall have passed a prescribed examination, shall "be styled and known as a certified public accountant." It forbids any other person to "assume such
