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forbears did the wolves-all in the interest of the public, whose servant it is.

The Department of Agriculture instructs the farmer how and when to plow, sow and reap. It furnishes seed, builds silos, issues bulletins, conducts experiment stations, inspects fertilizers and gives from time to time information as to crop conditions and estimates as to probable yields. The city man is not overlooked, for the government provides for his light by night, water by day and night, regulates the means of taking him to his business, and generally watches out for his health and comfort. The man in the city does not know, and has never seen his milkman, unless, perchance, he has met him by accident, as he has come in at an early hour from the club. So the State inspects his milk as it does the other articles of his food and his drugs, because he is powerless to do these things for himself. This is done not to serve one individual, but to serve the many, whose agent the State is.

It is said by some, who in my judgment have taken a superficial view, that the spirituality of the people is declining, and that religious life is at a low ebb. To that opinion I cannot subscribe. Whether it be true or not, at no period of time in all the history of the world have any people been so alive or so moved to suppress vice, certainly in its most hideous forms, and to promote morality, as we are now. Hence the laws regulating and prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors, the "white slave" act recently sustained by the Supreme Court of the United States as a constitutional measure, and numerous others.

We do not stop with laws upon these several subjects, but to ascertain the condition of the poor and to devise by law for their relief, have established commissions to conduct investigations as to the conditions of shop girls, the relation of low wages to the social vice, and, in fact, these investigations cover almost every subject from the money trust to the cause and extent of pallagra and the hookworm. It is no wonder that we have increased the volume of legislation!

Where the States have been slow to act, or where their action has not been effective, the national government has been called upon to legislate upon the subject, and the call has seldom been in vain. I might go on adding example to instance

and multiplying illustrations to sustain my statement that we are becoming a people whose life is marked out by law and regulated by statute, even almost to the extend that it was with. the Israelites when God, through his prophets and law-givers, regulated and governed their lives as to the most minute matters. It will be conceded that there is a point where the resemblance ceases, for he would be credulous indeed who would credit to our present legislators that divine inspiration and wisdom which guided Moses.

The student of government may well ask, Whither is this drift taking us? and where will the line be drawn beyond which the State may not go in regulating the life of the individual citizen? Will it ultimately either manage or regulate or own all business and trade? Already there are many who demand that it shall take charge of the telegraph and telephone companies, and men, high in official station, have advocated the Federal ownership of all lines of interstate railroads, with State ownership of lines engaged in intrastate commerce. Already a vast army are engaged in the government service in one form or another, and out of the public treasury, many, many thousands draw the means for their daily subsistence. If the trend continues the inquiry may well be made if all will not in the end depend upon the State for daily bread?

The majority of the laws to which I have referred have been upheld under what is called police power. Of that, Mr. Justice Holmes said in a recent opinion (219 U. S. 110, and this statement of the learned jurist has been used as a text by the leader of the Progressive Party in the attack upon the courts for striking down those laws which do not square with the Constitution):

"It may be said in a general way that the police power extends to all the great public needs. Camfield v. United States, 167 U. S., 518. It may be put forth in aid of what is sanctioned by usage, or held by the prevailing morality or strong and preponderant opinion to be greatly and immediately necessary to public welfare." 219 U. S., 110.

In the same case, where the Oklahoma Bank Guarantee bill was before the Supreme Court of the United States, and it was

asked whether the State could require all corporations or all merchants to help to guarantee each other's solvency, and where the courts were going to draw the line beyond which the legislatures could not go, he said:

“But the last is a futile question, and we will answer the others when they arise. With regard to the police power, as elsewhere in the law, lines are pricked out by the gradual approach and contact of decisions on the opposing side."

In the same opinion he announced as a rule governing the courts in construing the limitations of the police power as follows:

"In answering that question we must be cautious about pressing the broad words of the Fourteenth Amendment to a drily logical extreme. Many laws which it would be vain to ask the Court to overthrow could be shown, easily enough, to transgress a scholastic interpretation of one or another of the great guaranties in the Bill of Rights. They more or less limit the liberty of the individual or they diminish property to a certain extent. We have few scientifically certain criteria of legislation, and as it often is difficult to mark the line where what is called the police power of the States is limited by the Constitution of the United States, judges should be slow to read into the latter a volumus mutare as against the law-making power." Far-reaching as the police power of the State, as thus indicated, is on a petition to rehear the court, gave little comfort to those who think we have gone far enough, when it said:

"The analysis of the police power, whether correct or not, was intended to indicate an interpretation of what has taken place in the past, not to give a new or wider scope to the power. The propositions with regard to it, however, in any form, are rather in the nature of preliminaries." 219 U. S., 580.

We cannot see the end of all this. Rather, I think, that we are only at the beginning of a new era. The laws are changing with the times and with the customs of the people. Notwithstanding the increase of laws curtailing the rights of the individual, and the further fact that almost daily the strong

arm of the government is outstretched to bring under its power the business, the life and the happiness of the individual, there are those who are impatient at what is being done and in their mad haste to reform the world by legislation would take the bridles off the law-makers and give them free rein to enact any law which their wisdom or foolishness, their patriotism or selfishness, their judgment or caprice might dictate, the Constitution and Bill of Rights to the contrary notwithstanding.

We cannot stop the drift to paternalism and to centralize power any more than we can stop the flow of the mighty river which DeSoto beheld from our own bluffs. Nor would we stop it if we could, but, as with the great Mississippi when within its banks waters this valley and makes it the garden of the world, when it overflows them, it brings death and destruction, even so with the flow of the law towards paternalism. It must be confined between the banks of the Constitution, for if left to the unrestrained and unbridled will of the legislatures it will destroy the very government it should serve, and sink the people it should uplift. What a terrible death being governed to death would be!

How is it in Tennessee? Turning to the last biennial session of the General Assembly, we find that so far it has enacted a bill for compulsory education, one extending the powers of the workshop and factory inspector, one creating a board of public accountants, one creating a board to collect vital statistics, one requiring employers to provide seats for employes, an act authorizing a commission to report to the next General Assembly a workmen's compensation act, and a bill for funding the State debt.

In the above enumeration I did not call attention to an act creating a banking department of the State of Tennessee, which bill was endorsed by and introduced at the instance of the Tennessee Bankers' Association, the purpose of which is to provide greater security for depositors in all banks organized under the State. It is a matter of tribute to the Tennessee Bankers' Association that at their instance the Tennessee legislature declared by implication at least, that free banking is a public danger, and inspection and regulation are necessary

safeguards to be thrown by the State around those who engage therein.

These bills show that Tennessee is abreast with the present thought, and that once where the doctrine of non-interference was highly prized, paternalism is being enthroned.

It has long been recognized as the duty of the State to provide for the education of children. This has become in these United States a well-established and thoroughly admitted governmental function. The State owes the children residing within its borders the duty of providing for their training, so that when they grow up they will make good citizens of the commonwealth, appreciate our institutions and be equipped to discharge the duties which such citizenship imposes. We say, and correctly, I think, that the perpetuity of our liberties is dependent upon an educated and enlightened citizenship. The last session of our General Assembly increased the appropriations for public school purposes from twenty-five percentum to thirty-three and a third percentum of the gross revenues of the State. I shall make no argument, for none is needed, to support the appropriation of the one-third of the total gross revenue for educational purposes. I call attention to this act as indicative of the liberal policy of this State toward education, which will commend itself to every thoughtful citizen who regards citizenship in a republic where the citizen is the soverign as a trust to be enjoyed by himself and be transmitted to a posterity better equipped to discharge the duties attendant upon such citizenship than those of his generation.

Not only is it desirable for the State to provide for their education of the children within its borders, but the State now claims the right to enforce their education. If illiteracy is bad and education good for the State, then its duty is to eradicate the former by the latter. Hence, I direct your attention to chapter nine of the Public Acts of 1913, entitled, "An act to regulate and require the attendance of school children upon schools in the State of Tennessee, and to provide means for the enforcement of this act," effective February 19, 1913, and known as the Compulsory Education Bill. In brief, this act requires every parent, guardian or other person in the State having charge or control of any child between the years of eight and fourteen, inclusive,

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