Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/482

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
478
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
tional, substituted its own assumptions for the facts. In the face of statistical evidence to the contrary, the court held that the statute "does nothing to conserve the health, safety or morals of the employees."[1] Such an attitude of mind is unscientific and until it is corrected no mode of amending the constitution, however facile, can prevent salutary measures from being held up for a time by the courts. "A master of legal history tells us that taught law is tough law. Certainly it is true that our legal thinking and legal teaching are to be blamed more than the courts for the want of sympathy with social legislation which has been so much in evidence in the immediate past. One might almost say that instead of recall of judges, recall of law teachers would be a useful institution. At any rate, what we must insist upon is recall of much of the juristic and judicial thinking of the last century."[2]

Some Pitfalls of Reformers

If property owners now and then stand in their own light, reformers sometimes act with more zeal than sense. The prevailing spirit is too often given to destructive criticism and too little to constructive work. It is too impatient to attain its ends quickly, and relies too little upon the slow-going processes of education. It is too prone to attribute human failure to an unfavorable environment and too little given to laying it at the door of bad heredity. It attaches too much importance to raising wages and too little to stopping leakages, utilizing wastes, and teaching people how to make better use of the resources they already have. It too often imputes improper motives to its opponents. It is occasionally unmindful that there may be honest differences of opinion concerning the wisdom of the remedies which it proposes. It is either too penurious or not sufficiently alive to extravagance in the use of the public money. It has been known to wink at the lawlessness of organized labor while denouncing the lawlessness of capital, or vice versa. It at times needlessly alienates the sympathy of those without whose support it can not succeed. It now and then contents itself with securing the enactment of a statute, forgetful that the laws have no power to enforce themselves. An aroused public opinion is sometimes lulled to sleep by an act of the legislature, and inspectors who do not inspect occasionally give the community a sense of fancied security. Those opposed to a larger measure of social control have been known to withdraw their opposition on the ground that public opinion will not long demand its enforcement. For these and other reasons, the fossilized opponents of reform occasionally render the world a much needed service by calling reformers to account and pointing out their mistakes.

A despotism which secures order, property, and industry, which leaves liberty of religion and of private life unimpaired, and which enables quiet and unobtrusive men to pass through life untroubled and unmolested, will always
  1. The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 18, 1913, pp. 606-612.
  2. Professor Roscoe Pound, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 18, 1912, p. 339.