he militia; prohibiting their employers from discharging
them by reason of their necessary absence on such service, and
forbidding the labor unions from in any way preventing them, or
passing by-laws against their serving in the militia. Such by-laws
are, however, unlawful under the common law.

The law-making most in the popular mind on this whole question is that
concerning pensions. As is well known, the Federal pension list has
swollen to a sum far in excess of the total expense of the standing
army of Germany. An enormous number of Spanish War veterans who never
even left the country are being added to the list, and their widows
will be after them; the last survivor of such may not die before A.D.
2140, and the States themselves have not lagged far behind, all to the
enormous corruption of our citizenship; indeed, one or two more wars
(which the very motive of such wholesale pensioning is the more likely
to bring on) would bankrupt the nation more rapidly than even our
battleships. Not only that, but there is a distinct tendency to make a
privileged class of veterans, and the sons of veterans--and perhaps we
shall find of the sons of sons of veterans--by giving them preference
in civic employment and special education, support, or privileges at
the State's expense. Sometimes they get pedlar's licenses for nothing;
sometimes they are to be preferred in all civic employment; sometimes
they have special schools or asylums as well as soldiers' homes;
sometimes they are given free text-books in the public schools. The
Confederate States have not been behindhand in enacting similar
laws for their own soldiers, despite the implied prohibition of the
Fourteenth Amendment; but Southern courts have held them void.

The general right to bear arms is frequently restricted by the
prohibition of concealed weapons, or of the organization, drilling,
and training of armed companies not under State or Federal control,
both of which limitations have been held constitutional; and the
legislation prohibiting the employment or importation of private armed
guards, such as the Pinkerton men, has been already alluded to in our
chapter on labor legislation. The precedent for the latter is to be
found in the early English legislation against retainers; that is to
say, the armed private guard, or "livery," of the great noblemen;
whence is derived the custom of putting servants in livery. The
legislation against private drill companies is clo