its
latest manifestation--that of proposing legislation preventing
men from marrying without permission from the state--it is a most
picturesque example of that absence of constitutional feeling we have
just adverted to.

Now this freedom-of-contract principle is one which, of course,
legislation attempting to regulate the labor contract is peculiarly
liable to "run up against"; and it is, for this reason, not only or
chiefly because "labor" is opposed to the Constitution or because the
courts are opposed to "labor," that so many statutes, passed at
least nominally in the interest of labor, have been by them declared
unconstitutional. For instance, it is a primary principle that an
English free man of full age, under no disability, may control his
person and his personal activities. He can work six, or four, or
eight, or ten, or twelve, or twenty-four, or no hours a day if he
choose, and any attempt to control him is impossible under the
simplest principle of Anglo-Saxon liberty. Yet there is possibly a
majority of the members of the labor unions who would wish to control
him in this particular to-day; and will take for an example that
under the police power the state has been permitted to control him in
matters affecting the public health or safety, as, for instance, in
the running of railway trains, or, in Utah, in labor in the mines. But
freedom of contract in this connection results generally from personal
liberty itself; although it results also from the right to property;
that is to say, a man's wages (or his trade, for matter of that) is
his property, and the right of property is of no practical use if you
cannot have the right to make contracts concerning it.

The only matter more important doubtless in the laborer's eye than the
length of time he shall work is the amount of wages he shall receive.
Now we may say at the start that in the English-speaking world there
has been practically no attempt to regulate the _amount_ of wages. We
found such legislation in mediaeval England, and we also found that
it was abandoned with general consent. But of late years in these
socialistic days (using again socialistic in its proper sense of that
which controls personal liberty for the interest of the community or
state) it is surprisingly showing its head once more. In Australasia
and more recently in England we see the beginning of a minimum wage
system which we must most carefully describe before we leave the
subject