LAISSEZ FAIRE AND THE SUPREME COURT as a governmental policy to conciliate and win the support of the business classes. It is true that the Republican party gathered for a while at the beginning of the Civil War a great fervor of democracy, and that Presi dent Lincoln argued that he was merely leading the people back to the principles of Jefferson and of Jackson, but with the death of Lincoln the commercial idea became para mount and the support of the commercial classes was not only courted but looked upon more and more as necessary to the stability of the government. In this we were passing through the same stages that the French republic has also passed, and through which the Republic of Mexico is now passing. There has, as we have before seen, always been an individualism in the United States, but it has consisted less in a solicitude on the part of those in control for the freedom of others, and in the belief that their welfare would be subserved thereby, than in a desire that our own freedom of action and of acquir ing wealth should be unrestrained. We have subscribed to a sort of "a free fight," "sur vival of the fittest" theory, and have only thought of helping a contestant when he has been "put down and out." We have always been ready to furnish the palliative because we have always been humane. It is only recently that we have thought of preven tives, because, perhaps, we have lacked in true democracy, in solicitude and love, per haps have failed to realize any necessity therefor. . The feeling is well evidenced by a comparison of our poor houses and of our hospitals and asylums and of our treatment and provision for the inmates of each. We, as a people, have abundant sympathy for the blind and the insane, and provide lavishly for their comfort. We, on the other hand, however, look upon poverty and the inability to earn a livelihood almost as a crime, and when we are compelled to support poorhouses, support them grudgingly and in a niggardly manner. The belief that everyone has an equal chance in America has become deeply rooted in the minds of our successful
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upper classes, and has been reflected every where in the opinions of our courts, whose judges, if not coming from the upper classes, have themselves succeeded and passed their social lives with those who have. This indi vidualism was from an early time especially noticeable in the South, where social structure and economic development seemed to make a protective policy unwise and unnecessary. Its leaders were at first drawn from the large landed proprietors whose ancestors were the English cavaliers and country gentry, and who had but little in common with the masses of the people. So, too, even the lower classes of whites who may be said to have won the West for the American union were in a large measure composed of and in thought and action followed in a large measure the leader ship of the Scotch-Irish pioneers, who bring ing with them the individualism of Knox and of Calvin with all of its impatience at governmental control pushed into the wilder ness, and without aid, except that derived from their own axes and their own rifles, cleared and settled the land, admitted their own associates. Far away from central gov ernment and control they established their own social customs, framed their own gov ernments, provided for their own defense, and fought for the homes and the social insti tutions which they themselves had created. Just as to the old Anglo-Saxon chief the King was a mere war-lord, raised to his position solely for military purposes, and with no conceded rights of social or political inter ference, so, too, by the average western settler, central go -eminent was looked upon largely as a war device or at best as a means to preserve the freedom of commerce and not as something which should interfere with social and industrial customs or the freedom of industrial contracts. These earlier times, it is true, had in them none of the factory development of to-day, but even after that began and great masses of people became crowded into the industrial centers, removed from the land, subject to the demands of their employers and their labor the subject
