554

THE GREEN BAG

union criminal conspiracies. But at the beginning of the last century a change came. The war with France had been fought and won; the fleets of both the French and the Dutch had been practically swept from the seas; the foreign markets which once belonge 1 to the French and the Dutch, now belonged to England; the cotton gin hadbeeninvented; steam had been utilized; the mines had been uncovered; all that was necessary for Eng land was to manufacture and the markets of the world were open to her. At the same time the suffrage had been largely extended and the business man had come into political power, and above all, capital had become diffused through the establishment of banks and the accumulated resources of the country made capable of utilization. There was im mediately a clamor on all sides for the over throw of the restrictions of the past. In order to compete in the markets of the world and to take advantage of the opportunities for wealth which the foreign trade afforded, ships had to be built and chartered, trading posts established, and factories built, and combinations of capital were found abso lutely necessary. It was no longer for the interests of the employer that the rates of wages should be regulated by law, nor that the laborer should be tied to the land. The manufacturer wanted the opportunity to offer extra wages, because at times he wished totwork his factories night and day, so that he might get his goods rapidly upon the market. He did not want any restrictions on the hours of labor. In the past law and custom had so operated that no one could become a master mechanic or manufacturer who did not belong to one of the powerful trade guilds and who had not served an apprenticeship. In this new age of capital ism and of democracy — for it was both a capitalistic and a democratic uprising — men wished to become employers, business men and manufacturers on the strength of their brains and their capital alone. The consequence was that the restrictive laws of the past were repealed. The old hide bound

judicial decisions were reversed. The labor union and, to a large extent, the combina tion of capital were legitimized. "The lid. was taken off." It was lawful to pursue to almost any length the war of competition.1 It was at this time that the industries in America began to really take their form; that our great commercial development began. For years both in England and in America we have gone on in this same un checked way; we have preached everywhere the doctrine of laissez faire, laissez passer. For years the man who would have advo cated any checking, any governmental inter ference would have been and waff branded as a dangerous character. Twenty years ago, we might say even ten years ago, Folk, La Follette, Cummings and Roosevelt would all have been branded as socialists — as anarchists —-for the average man does not know the difference between an anarchist and a socialist. We were and still are to a large extent afraid to regulate and to restrict for fear that we might retard our industrial development. We all remember the bitter antagonism to the child labor reforms of Lord Shaftesbury, and the oft-repeated fear that they would result in the destruction of the commercial supremacy of England. We remember the reply of Mr. James Hill to the criticism that in operating his road he had not sufficiently considered the welfare and needs of the farmers of Minnesota and North Dakota, through which his road ran, and that it was that he was looking for larger game; that he was seeking to open up for America the trade of the Orient, and that the opening up of that trade would benefit everyone, the farmer of North Dakota and of Minnesota, as well as the manufacturer of the East, and what was a merger or two compared with this. We have in recent years, however, come to believe as a people, small business men and farmers and laboring men alike, that this freedom has gone too far; and everywhere we find a tendency towards McGregor v. Steamship Co.