548
THE GREEN BAG
or force against their neighbors. That is, knowing full well that they were not equal in natural powers, and that still less have they ever within historical memory started with equal artificial advantages, knowing also that power of every sort has a tendency to increase itself, we stand by and let this most unequal race take its course, forgetting that the very name of society implies that it shall not be a mere race, but that its object is to provide for the common good of all, by restraining the power of the strong, and pro tecting the helplessness of the weak." The result, as we have before said, were the factory acts and the social legislation of recent years. "Scratch an Englishman," says Professor Dicey, "and you will find a socialist." In America the laissez faire idea has been much more deeply rooted than in England, and it is natural that it should have been. The large amount of public land gave an. opportunity to the wage earner, which was not to be found in England or in France, and the era of the factory and of the large manu facturing centers was further in the distance. The agricultural population was much greater, and until recently almost anyone could be a landed proprietor. There was to be found especially among the puritans of New England a militant individualism, for it is to be noted that the teachings of Calvin were almost as much social and political as they were religious, and in them the right of self government and the freedom of the church and of the locality from governmental inter ference was everywhere ..emphasized. The birth throes of the new country were a pro test against navigation acts, searches and seizures and governmental restraints of all kinds. So, too, class lines have never been as closely drawn here as in Europe, and the business classes have been constantly re cruited from the laboringand the agricultural. Added to this was the individualism of the frontier, which everywhere chafes at control and at the restraints which collectivism thrusts upon it. The right of governmental
interference in social and industrial matters and of a state paternalism was, however, early asserted in Massachusetts, where the barrenness of the soil, the lack of a western domain, and an abundance of water power forced an industrial development along man ufacturing lines as far back as the colonial era. There the crowding of population and the poverty and abject condition of the factory employees early emphasized the necessity of some governmental supervision and served as an offset to the optimistic theory (based upon fact where the country was new and the land was within reach of all) of universal and equal opportunity. There, too, an enlightened puritanism early taught the doctrine of the equality of man and early led to a realization of the value of the indi vidual, to a knowledge that a state could be no stronger than the sum of the strength of its individual citizens, to the belief that reli gion and morality were necessary to every free state, and to the founding of public schools and to compulsory education, which could only mean paternalism. New Eng land, also, and Pennsylvania were above all benefited by the system of protection, which could only be justified as a popular measure on the theory that it bettered the condition of both the wage earner and the manufac turer. The policy of popular education and of a protective tariff once adopted, the theory that the government could only properly be used as a taxing or a fiscal agency, and as a guardian of the public peace could no longer be insisted upon, and the transi tion was easy to the idea that it had great social duties to perform, among which were the betterment of the condition of the indi vidual citizen and the furnishing to him of aid in the industrial struggle where equality of opportunity was not present. But -though this democratic and humane theory was a logical consequence of protec tion, governmental interference for the pro tection of the wage earner was in the minds of but few of its advocates. Protection was a commercial theory merely. It was adopted
