ttest. If a selective policy is pursued in good faith and
with sufficient intelligence, the nation will at least be learning from
its mistakes. It should find out gradually the kind and method of
selection, which is most desirable, and how far selection by
non-interference is to be preferred to active selection.

As a matter of fact the American democracy both in its central and in
its local governments has always practiced both methods of selection.
The state governments have sedulously indulged in a kind of interference
conspicuous both for its activity and its inefficiency. The Federal
government, on the other hand, has been permitted to interfere very much
less; but even during the palmiest days of national irresponsibility it
did not altogether escape active intervention. A protective tariff is,
of course, a plain case of preferential class legislation, and so was
the original Inter-state Commerce Act. They were designed to substitute
artificial preferences for those effected by unregulated individual
action, on the ground that the proposed modification of the natural
course of trade would contribute to the general economic prosperity. No
less preferential in purpose are the measures of reform recently enacted
by the central government. The amended Inter-state Commerce Law largely
increases the power of possible discrimination possessed by the Federal
Commission. The Pure Food Bill forbids many practices, which have arisen
in connection with the manufacture of food products, and discriminates
against the perpetrators of such practices. Factory legislation or laws
regulating the hours of labor have a similar meaning and justification.
It is not too much to say that substantially all the industrial
legislation, demanded by the "people" both here and abroad and passed in
the popular interest, has been based essentially on class
discrimination.

The situation which these laws are supposed to meet is always the same.
A certain number of individuals enjoy, in the beginning, equal
opportunities to perform certain acts; and in the competition resulting
there from some of these individuals or associations obtain advantages
over their competitors, or over their fellow-citizens whom they employ
or serve. Sometimes these advantages and the practices whereby they are
obtained are profitable to a larger number of people than they injure.
Sometimes the reverse is true. In either event the state is usually
asked to interfere by t