have been "short-handed." What might have been done if such had not been the case, we are left to conjecture. At least, when we consider their opportunities, we are constrained to marvel at their moderation.

When a roll of states is called Tennessee cannot, however, claim more than honorable mention in this particular, for with the making of laws, as with books, there is no restraint, reasonable or unreasonable, save the protecting care of the constitution and the Bill of Rights, and there are some who would remove these.

In truth, we are fast becoming a law-ridden people. Some years ago the speaker of one of the houses of the New York Assembly, when reviewing the work of a session just brought to a close, in an address before a Chautauqua assembly, said:

"It is a terrible thing to be governed to death."

And such may be our fate!

When this Association was organized thirty years ago, and it was made the duty of the President to communicate to the annual meeting the most noteworthy changes made in the statute law, the lawmaking habit had not become so fixed as at present. If so, I seriously doubt if such provision would have been inserted in our constitution. Rather it would have been provided that the meeting should be opened with a prayer that "from the making of so many laws may the good Lord deliver

us!"

From what I have said it follows that I cannot, within reasonable limitations as to time, present for your consideration all of the most noteworthy changes in the statute law, State and Federal, during the preceding year. I shall therefore avail myself of the quite prevalent custom of filing a list of such laws as an appendix to this address (with leave to print); and content myself as well, as in that matter at least, please you, by calling to your attention only a few of the most important changes and commenting on the general trend of legislation.

I shall not attempt to lay down any formula whereby too much legislation may be prevented. I know of no remedy. Nor shall I stop to lament the departure from the days of a few laws and simple living. Those days have passed, and we cannot hope to return to them. To do so we would have to turn back the

hands of progress on the dial of time and go back, in fact, if in theory, to the stage coach and tallow candle, which we would not do if we could.

This government was founded on the theory that the best government is the one where there is the least interference by the State with the citizen consistent with law and order, and the security of person and property.

When we recall that the fathers had what they thought was too much government of the kind, and when the dearly bought liberties of the English people had not become time-worn with use, we can well understand how zealous they were to establish governments which would interfere the least with the rights of the individual. For a hundred years we boasted of such a government. Yet from the first, though imperceptible for many decades, we drifted from that doctrine of laissez faire, or the non-interference by the government with the citizen. A review of legislation, State and National, will show that after the first few decades the recurring sessions of the general assemblies of States and Congress carried us further from this one-time highly prized doctrine. He has been a superficial student who does not realize that we are approaching paternalism and adding to the powers of the central governments, State and National.

In the early days it was not considered either the right or the duty of the State to interfere by law with those matters of individual concern which were then best worked out by the intercourse of one citizen with another, under natural laws. What was termed "personal liberty" was highly prized. Centralized power was looked upon with disfavor, even fear. The conflict between the king, who was the State, and the individual, was too fresh in the minds of the framers of our government for them to want a government of great power. The right of local self-government (existing at the time of the adoption of the State constitutions, though frequently not mentioned in them) was regarded as one of the most valued rights of the citizen, and was not affected or deemed as surrendered by the adoption of these constitutions. Each community regulated in its own way its purely local matters.

The citizen pursued his own vocation in his own way, untrammeled by laws or regulations, and looked to the government for protection of his life, his liberty and his property, but not for assistance in the pursuit of either pleasure or profit. The line of demarcation between the functions of government and the individual rights of the citizen was clear, and encroachments by the former were not readily accepted. Witness the whiskey rebellion in Pennsylvania against the tax on spirits, and later the attempt by South Carolina to nullify the customs, which was more of a conflict between the Federal and State authority than of the resistance of the people to the curtailment by the government of rights of the individual.

Many things have united to bring about changes from these conditions. Within the limitations of an address such as this I can not enumerate all of them. I shall not attempt to give them in a nutshell. I shall name a few of the many to illustrate my premise, that our government has become a paternal one, and will attempt to show that it will continue such. First of all, from a small population lying along the Atlantic seaboard, with few cities of importance, and a vast unsettled frontier, the extent of which was unknown, with a people devoted largely to agriculture and to such commerce as we had by sea with the mother country and West Indies, we have grown to be a nation with a population approaching one hundred millions of people, with no longer any frontier, having an urban population of approximately one-third of the total. Inventions, following fast and furious, have changed the habits and customs of the people. Rapid transit has put in touch the most distant places of the country. We have telegraphic and telephonic communications everywhere and with everybody. Our wealth is unknown to any other country. Though our territory extends from sea to sea, we are a compact people, so dependent one upon another that commercial depression or prosperity in one section is immediately reflected through the great trade centers to every part of the common country. Conditions of life have changed. Things are now regarded as the essentials which were the luxuries of the rich of a decade ago, and were unknown at the close of the Civil War. Legislative favors, which were the first indicia of paternalism, have fostered private interests and

afforded the means of and the opportunity for combinations of trade and capital. Along with these, a change has come to pass in the attitude of the people to the government and in the relation of the State to the individual. No longer can he, fighting single-handed, hope to secure those things essential to his life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, and which in the early days of the republic he was able to obtain for himself. The government is his agent, and the instrument of all the people, and it is called upon to do for the individual that which he either cannot do for himself at all or cannot do so well as can be done for him by it.

When our forbears were engaged in taking this country from the savage and reclaiming it from the wilderness, their wants were few and easily supplied. They gave to, rather than asked of, the State. The early settlers of Tennessee frequently complained of the neglect of the governments at Raleigh and Washington. They asked protection from the ravages of the Indians and the lawlessness of the backwood desperadoes. They frequently asked in vain. You will remember that it was when repeated petitions of this kind had been declined that John Sevier and his associates organized the State of Franklin and undertook to provide for themselves that which North Carolina had refused to give.

Now all is changed. The State is the Great Father, with bottomless credit. We, especially of the South, decried the paternal when it fostered wealth. We now demand that the government protect the people from its power, irrespective of whether it was fostered by legislation or is the result of natural causes. The common law condemned as unlawful unreasonable restraint of trade, but we have provided by State and National legislation more drastic laws whereby to curb the ever-increasing power of the combinations of trade and capital. We have found that in many instances employes, individually and collectively, are not at arm's length with the employers in the matter of contract. So we have limited the right of the individual to make contracts, yet when these laws have been attacked as unconstitutional they have had as their defenders, not the many whose right is thus curtailed, but the few whose growing powers they were enacted to curb. We protect by

statute the miners and the factory laborers from contracting to receive their wage in script, provide when and how it shall be paid, as well as guard those engaged in hazardous occupations from agreeing to assume the dangers incident to their employment by laws denying the employes the right of releasing the employers from negligence, and the like.

To be sure, the State has always regarded the common carrier as subject to its regulation, but only since it has come to pass that railroads cover the continent with their network of rails, number their employes by the hundreds of thousands, and, upon their operation, the people depend for the interchange of practically all commerce, has the government provided commissions for their supervision, regulated by statute the instrumentalities to be used by them, the hours of work of the employes, the contractual relation of employer and employe the rates, fares and charges permitted to be made for services performed, and prohibited rebates and special contracts of every kind whereby one shipper is given any privilege not common to all.

In some States laws have been enacted providing compensation to be made by the employer to an employe injured or killed in service, and such laws when within constitutional limitations are upheld. It is argued that the compensation for injuries is a legitimate charge upon the business, and should be borne by the community at large, and not by the unfortunate employe or his family. It would seem that the end has not been reached in the matter of regulation of carriers, for if the State may regulate them in the above matters, it sooner or later, of necessity, must regulate the wages paid for their labor.

At common law the innkeeper was subject to certain restrictions, but it has remained for the State in our day to provide by statute the length of the sheets with which "mine host" shall cover his guest. The State as the guardian of the public health prohibits the use of the public drinking cup, the roller towel and the ancient and service-worn comb and brush. To protect the health of the individual it encourages hygiene, promotes cleanliness, establishes quarantines, enforces screen ordinances and encourages the killing of flies, even as our