and Ohio statutes had, in their home States, been declared unconstitutional in 1904. In the latter part of 1905 the statute passed in New York met with the same fate there. But when in our Courts the reproduction of these enactments was assailed upon like grounds, its constitutionality was upheld. So that, if the assumption as to its origin is correct, we are saddled with a statute highly penal, exceedingly questionable in point of wisdom, and in many respects extremely embarrassing and difficult of application, transcribed from the statute books of other States where it was repudiated as invalid.

In an age like ours the tendency to provide by legislation for and against every imaginable thing is peculiarly active. It has been shrewdly remarked that mankind throughout the civilized world has once again reached a period when it feels its age and not unnaturally looks about it with an eye for symptoms suggestive of decay and for all manner of threatened ills, uneasy to be doing something to avert the one and the other. Certain it is that a note of our generation is its proneness to be scared about a great many things, some near at hand, some quite remote. We are afraid that our natural resources are nearing exhaustion, and we fall in love at sight with every proposition looking to their conservation. We are even trying to ascertain and in some way profit by what our crafty neighbors upon Mars may have been doing in that line. We are gravely calculating how long the sun can hold out to shine upon us and keep us alive, and what catastrophes may be looked for from the interference of runaways from other systems with our own. We pondered with more or less. anxiety the scheduled plunge of our earth through the tail of the comet, until happily that became a tale of the past. We mistrust the very air we breathe as thronged with countless foes asail upon the breezes, astride of every floating particle of dust, small but strong for their size, and full of pernicious activity. We behold in a drop of unboiled water a

veritable reservoir teeming with hostile entities impatient to invade us. We see no end of gruesome chances in the ancient and honorable practice of kissing, in the moist caress of a dog, in the primitive and only unpatented treatment of a postage stamp. Some few of us are afraid of tainted money. We fear manifold perils lurking in a glass of wine, in a good dinner, in the soothing comfort of a cigar. We are apt to be alarmed by one thing or another pretty much all the time, and inclined to decry whatever may be fairly called living as dangerous to life. There is, of course, a measure of sense in this twentieth-century awakening to untoward possibilities long heedlessly ignored, and a measure of justification in the eagerness to provide against them. Its prevailing exaggeration, however, is leading to legislation of doubtful utility and indubitable absurdity. A judicious scheme of legislation for the protection of our forests and our water powers, our mineral deposits and wild lands, our fish and game, can call forth only hearty commendation. To incorporate in it a statute for the conservation of the State's wealth of bullfrogs is hardly essential to its completeness. The enforcement of approved and tried methods of public sanitation and hygiene is wise and timely. But is it needful to enact into solemn statute elaborate regulations on the subject of spitting or throwing offal into streets, or on a multiplicity of minor subjects which might, it would seem, be safely left to local boards properly constituted and spurred into action by an adequate central authority? Nor is it alone the direct effect of this species of legislation to swell the volume of the statute law that makes it objectionable. It has a potent and still more mischievous indirect effect in encouraging legislation upon all sorts of topics by habituating people to think that nothing is too trifling for legislative regulation, and that for every actual or fancied ill the ready relief is a public statute.

In the days before the Constitution of 1874, the recurring mania for legislation found its expression most

ordinarily in special and local enactments. Since that means of giving vent to it has been cut off the crop of general legislation has astonishingly augmented. Down to that date the general laws of Pennsylvania as reproduced in Purdon's Digest filled two volumes of modest size. Since then, although the regular sessions of the Legislature have been cut down to half their previous number, the digest of the general laws has so grown as to fill to overflowing four much larger volumes and the accumulation is going on at an everincreasing ratio. In 1871 the Pamphlet Laws, covering 1398 pages, contained 1300 statutes, of which 1222 were special (183 of them incorporation acts, and a goodly proportion grants of pensions, gratuities, etc., to individuals) and 76 were general laws. In 1872 the number of pages was 1184, and that of statutes 1113, 1063 of these being special (with a considerable sprinkling of pension bills and 151 incorporation acts), but only 49 general laws. In 1879, 195 pages accommodated 211 acts, among which were 25 appropriation bills, 56 special acts (not a few of them granting pensions and gratuities), and 130 general laws. The Pamphlet Laws of 1909 make up a stately tome of 921 pages, with 659 statutes,-374 being appropriation bills, 24 special acts (mostly repealing others), and 261 general laws.

A comparison of these figures is interesting from several points of view. One of them has respect to the appropriation bills. The restriction of such enactments by the Constitution to a single subject, except as to matters within the General Appropriation Bill, accounts for their increase only to a very limited extent. The single appropriation bill in 1872, made grants of State aid to but nine charitable and educational institutions not under State control, including normal schools. The Legislature of 1909 made appropriations to 254 such institutions. As is well remembered, this work was done in such a heedless manner that the total

appropriated far exceeded the estimated revenues of the State, calling into play the peculiar function of the Governor in scaling down excessive appropriations, and obliging him, even after that task had been performed, to veto other measures because the treasury was exhausted. There has been much discussion of the wisdom and practical effect of the Pennsylvania system or lack of system in affording State aid to institutions of supposed public benefit. So far as concerns hospitals, it has recently undergone elaborate and intelligent debate at the hands of eminent members of the medical profession. The almost unanimous consensus seems to be that it has resulted in evil. Not by way of exception, but with painful reiteration there occur, coming from persons speaking with great authority, such statements as these,

"Errors of judgment, timidity in refusal, and acquiescence in doubtful action by officials, encouraged by the social and political power of combinations of men, have converted the State's generous impulses into a mistaken system of charity."

"The honesty of the whole State has been put to a test by years of plunder, which I fear it has not been able to stand." "Appropriations to hospitals have become a corrupting influence in politics."

Utterances of this kind, emanating from responsible and well-informed sources, and deliberately made and published, cannot be brushed aside as extreme or prejudiced. And even if they be regarded as in some degree obnoxious to that criticism, it is perhaps not amiss to recall yet another effect of this indiscriminate and lavish giving of money by the State, indicated in the address to this Association of its then President, in 1905. It must be evident to any one who has had the opportunity and taken the pains to observe, that it has already to some extent checked and tends more and more to paralyze the disposition of the people to aid deserving and useful public institutions out of their own pockets. Charitable enterprise which but a few years ago found ready support at the hands of those of moderate

means, to whom a contribution is a sacrifice, now appeals to such persons and many others almost in vain. The habit of giving for these purposes is being unlearned by the generality of men. They approve heartily, to be sure, but advise application to the State or to the notoriously rich. The pride and glory of local self-help, shared in by all, in matters of public charity are departing from us, and with them will inevitaby go one of the finest traits of the American character, making room for others of a very different sort. It is one thing to ask a man to join with the mass of his fellows in creating or maintaining a public institution, because of his identification with the community, by a gift proportionate to his resources, his station and his interest in the particular object to be served. It is quite another thing to ask a man for a gift solely upon the basis of his ability and willingness to give, in order to provide such an institution for a community to which he does not belong and has no direct relation, in ease of those upon whom the duty to provide it primarily rests. The one is the enlistment of all having a common interest in a common cause for the common benefit, aiming at their closer association and more practical sense of fellowship and mutual responsibilities, to the enlargement and strengthening of their local patriotism, their independence and their sympathy with one another. The other, and almost in the same degree the practice of soliciting from the State what the community ought to do for itself, are perilously near the asking of alms and aim at and tend to all that lies in the opposite direction. In these constant appeals for aid to the State and to the rich upon whom we have no rightful claims, we are accustoming ourselves to look with complacency upon the acceptance collectively of that which individually we would scorn to accept. But after all, what we do collectively is bound to react upon us individually. We cannot as members of a community, of an association, of a corporation, assent to the surrender of any vital prin