"Arkansas is safe.

Small-pox has broken out in the legislature.” It should not be so. In our political order, the lawmaking power is of necessity the fundamental base. Laws must be enacted before they can be either expounded or administered, and it is a mistake to suppose that the state is best served by the legislature that meets, passes its appropriations and then adjourns. We have an underlying body of law, it is true; as a general scheme, it is complete, but in its details it must be constantly adjusted to the refinements of our civilization. Modern inventions and industrial development imperatively require the enactment of new laws to meet the altered conditions, which the complex forces of our civilization have created, and the lawmaker of to-day is confronted with problems of equal importance and far greater intricacy than those debated in Westminster Hall in the early days of English history.

It would be idle to contend, though, that the quality of our legislative output has maintained the same level of care and precision that characterized the work of legislative bodies, both in England and in this country in an earlier period. A decadent tendency is plainly observable-laws loosely thrown together, often contradictory in terms, without exactness of expression, their meaning obscured by phraseology that is vague and unintelligible. In an able address, delivered before the American Bar Association, Governor Griggs, of New Jersey, now attorney general of the United States, speaking on this subject, says:

"When it comes to the very act of making law, all requirements of special study, experience, training and legal insight are absent. There is no skilled class of legislators, nor is there any school of legislation at which may be learned the theory and practice of constructing a statute. Generally speaking, statutes are the products of unascertainable authors-children of nobody-unable to boast of definite parentage. No one certifies to their completeness or accuracy. They are not prepared upon careful plans, submitted and supervised by expert architects of law-building. It is all chance and haphazard; the event must determine whether they are good or bad; whether they express the actual intent of the author or some intent entirely foreign to his will."

The average legislative enactment of to-day, both congressional and state, is in marked contrast with that of a century

ago. This may be illustrated by two statutes of equal importance, and dealing with the same subject. The judiciary act of September 24, 1789 (1 Stat. at Large, 79) furnished the structure of our system of federal courts. It had no previous model to serve as a guide, for the delicate adjustment of jurisdiction between the federal and state tribunals has no counterpart in the jurisprudence of any other country. After the lapse of a century, it remains an almost perfect model of careful and sagacious legislation. Compare its precise wording with the act of March 3, 1887, defining the jurisdiction of the United States Courts, the phraseology of which was scarcely understandable at all until the enrollment was corrected by a subsequent act, and the chief result from which has been to unsettle and confuse the whole subject of federal jurisdiction, and originate questions which the courts have found great difficulty in solving. Comparisons of a similar character might be multiplied ad infinitum.

There is a reason for it. The popular legislative body of to-day is not the deliberative body that it was a century ago. Its methods of work do not tend to deliberation. Bills are introduced by the hundred, apparently for no other purpose than to give patronage to the printer. They are referred to appropriate committees, but it is only in rare instances that the details of the measures are there canvassed, or that any attempt is made to give them fitting form. The committees report them out in most cases as they were introduced, and except in case of a measure that enlists a widespread interest, or that sounds the political depths, the work of these standing committees is largely perfunctory. The bills then appear on the calendar for second reading, and consideration in committee of the whole. They embrace every variety of subject, from revenue measures to bills prohibiting the docking of horses' tails, or legalizing prize-fights. Many of them appear at a glance to be trivial, or dangerous, or disturbing and they are voted down. Some deal with legitimate subjects of legislation; they propose needed changes in the laws, and perhaps affect in a vital manner, for good or ill, the commerce of the state and the welfare of its people. The chief difficulty, though, is that with such a productiveness of bills introduced and reported from the standing committees, to the average legislator they seem a confused mass; and the time that is consumed in political wrangles and in killing off bills that nobody wants, except perhaps the members that introduced. them, leaves very little time for a deliberate discussion and care

ful consideration of measures that are of importance to a well ordered commonwealth. During the last session, a total of 1,050 bills were introduced in the Senate and House. Of these only some 196 were enacted into laws, and of these latter over 100 were appropriations and measures of a local character, not touching the interests of the people at large.

It is curious to note how, since the early days of the Republic, the pendulum has swung from one extreme to the other as respects the true province of legislation, and the degree to which private interests should be subjected to governmental supervision and control. There has always existed a school of statesmen and political thinkers who have advocated the doctrine that the functions of legislation should be kept at a minimum, and it was perhaps this way of thinking that moved Tacitus to say: "When the state is most corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied." It sprang largely from a sentiment that the right to contract freely was sacred, and that the operations of nature's laws should be depended upon to work out a harmonious co-ordination between the interests of the community and those of the individual, with as few restraints as possible on his freedom of action. This doctrine of non-interference had a strong lodgment in the American mind. It reflected the sense of individualism that gave rise to many of our institutions; it was a protest against the parental control and meddling that the centralized governments of Europe exercised prior to the French Revolution.

Wonderful changes have taken place, and a different political philosophy is now in vogue with American legislatures. The best governed are no longer the least governed. We are drifting back to the days of Henry VII, when people were directed at what fairs to sell their goods; to those of James I, which prescribed the quantity of ale to be sold for a penny; to the good old days in France when men were not at liberty to work when and as long as they choose, and in Germany when a shoemaker could not ply his trade unless a "board of control" certified that he was competent.

Many causes have contributed to this, and the tendency is not altogether to be deplored. Prof. Bryce, in his masterful review of the American commonwealth, explains these causes. "Modern civilization," he says, "in becoming more complex and refined, has become more exacting. It discerns more benefits which the organized power of government can secure, and grows

more anxious to attain them. Men live fast, and are impatient of the slow working of natural laws. Still greater has been the influence of a quickened moral sensitiveness and philanthropic sympathy. The sight of preventable evil is painful, and is felt as a reproach. He who preaches patience and reliance upon natural progress is thought callous."

Modern conditions necessitate and justify a certain amount of what has been called paternalism in legislation, and the narrow view taken by Herbert Spencer and political thinkers of his school as to the true limits of state intervention, if applied to-day, would suffer untold wrongs to go unredressed and the direst misery to prevail without palliation. We would have no factory legislation, no public libraries, no education at the expense of the state, no sanitary inspection. Experience teaches that individual action is impotent to correct many abuses in the field of private industry. Legislation must be resorted to. It is "the problem of the twentieth man," as Professor Ely calls it. He illustrates with the familiar instance of Sunday closing laws. If there are twenty barbers in a city and nineteen of them agree to close on Sunday, the twentieth will see an advantage to himself in keeping open. The nineteen, then, need protection against the twentieth, and the only way to get it is by compulsory legislation against all.

Meritorious as much of our legislation is, which a hundred years ago would have been condemned as officious intermeddling with private rights and interests, the practical question is what limit should be placed upon it? Is there any test that can be applied, except that of expediency? If we should legislate as to all matters wherein we can work the greatest good to the greatest number, an almost illimitable field is opened up. If the state is to regulate the hours of work, then why should it not provide the work and compel each citizen to do his portion; and as too constant work debases the body and dwarfs mentality, then the state should furnish amusements, operas, balls, et cetera. The sphere of morals, also, should not be exempt; all moral duties should be enforced by legal penalties, and Y. M. C. A.'s should be made to flourish by state aid. The matter of health, too, should be looked into; if we restrict people as to what they shall drink, to be consistent we should tell them what to eat, and at what hours to dine, and when to go to bed. Precedents can be found for all manner of detailed interferences with people's tastes, inclinations

and private concerns, and when that kind of legislation comes into vogue, as it is fast coming into vogue now, it is noticeable that the courts promptly lend their sanction to it by enlarging their notions of the "police power," that great reservoir of jurisprudence, which seemingly has no bottom. Professor Bryce makes the mistake of saying that "it is in the West, which plumes itself as being pre-eminently the land of freedom, enterprise and self-help, that this tendency is most active and plays the strangest pranks, because in the West legislators are more impatient and self-confident than elsewhere."

But this is scarcely true. An examination of recent legislation in the Eastern and Middle states reveals the tendency just as strong there as here; in fact, the initiative is frequently in the Eastern states, and Western legislators borrow the experiments for home use.

They are experiments, and it is difficult to foretell what ultimate result will follow. Philosophers have said that this practice of regulating by law what men should regulate for themselves, this reliance upon the sovereign power of political methods, dwarfs industrial life. That it engenders in certain classes of citizens ideas of what the state ought to do for them that do not comport with a spirit of self-helpfulness; that the infinity of restrictions placed upon men and their pursuits in life arrests development and breeds discontent. If this be true, there is a fruitful harvest ahead; and then, perhaps, the pendulum will swing back in the other direction.

A cursory glance at some of the bills introduced in the last legislature shows that Colorado does not lag much in the rear of other states in formulating schemes of legislation which the founders of the republic would doubtless have regarded as puerile, intemperate and unnecessary. There were bills to carry in effect almost every kind of legislative dabbling-to regulate the hours of employment in underground mines and in smelting and ore reduction works; to prohibit any person from issuing a railroad pass, and making it a jail offense to ride on one; to provide for the establishment of railroad depots every six miles on the petition of residents; making it a penal offense to dock a horse's tail; to require the examination and licensing of all architects by a state board; to authorize cities to license and regulate department stores; to regulate the price to be charged for electric light; to provide weekly pay-days; making it assault and battery