Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1884-03-22
HERBERT SPENCER ON "THE COMING
SLAVERY"

opened in Spain, peasants standing on the
tracks were not unfrequently run over, and
| that the blame fell on the engine-drivers
for not stopping, rural experiences having
Welded no conception of the momentum of
large mass moving at high velocity.
! The incident is recalled to me on contem-
plating the ideas OF the so.called "prac-
| teal " politician, into whose mind there
enters no thought of such thing as polit
ical momentum, still less of a political
momentum which, instead of diminishing
or remaining constant, increases. The
| theory on which he daily proceeds is that
| the change caused by his measure will stop
| where he intends it to stop. He contem.
plates intently the things his act will
| achieve but thinks little of the remoter
Issues of the movement his act sets up, and
still less its collateral issues. When, in
wartime, food for powder" was to be
provided by encouraging opulation-when
! Mr.. Pitt said, "Let US make relief in cases
where there are a number of children a
matter of right and honor, instead of
ground for opprobrium and contempt it
was not expected that the poor-rates would
be quadruplsd in fifty years, that women
with many bastards would be preferred as
wives to modest women beause of their
incomes from the parish, and that hosts
of rate.psyers would be pulled down into
the ranks of pauperism. Legislators who
in 1888 voted 100000 year to aid in
building school. houses never supposed that
the step they then took would lead to
forced contributions, local and general, now
amounting to &c, coo. 600; they did not in
tend to establish the principle that A
should be made responsible for educating
BIS offspring they did not dream of
compulsion which should deprive poor
widows of the help of their elder children
and still less did they dream that their
successors, by requiring impoverished par
ents to apply to boards of guardians to pay
the fees which school boards would not re-
NIT, would initiate habit of applying to
boards of guardians, and so cause pauper-
ization. Neither did those who in 1884
passed an Act regulating the labor of
women and children in certain factories
imagine that the system they were be.
ginning would end in the restriction
and inspection of labor in all kinds of
producing establishments where more
than fifty people are employed nor
did they conceive that the inspec.
ton provided would grow to the ex.
tent of requiring that, b,fore "young
person is emp eyed in factory, author
ity must be given by certifying surgeon,
who, by personal examination Ito which no
limit is placed), has satisfied himself that
there is no incapacitating disease or bodily
infirmity, his verdict determining whether
the "young person shall earn wages or
not. Even less, as l say, does the politi-
clan who plumes himself on the practical. |
ness of his aims conceive the indirect re-
suits that will follow the direct results of
his measures. Thus, to take a case con-
nected with one ramed above, it was not |
intended through the system of "pay- |
ment by results to do anything more |
than give teachers an efficient stimulus it |
was not supposed that in numerous cases |
their health would give way under the |
stimulus it was not expected that they |
would be led to adopt examining system |
and to put undue pressure on weak and !
dull children, often to their great in Jury ; |
it was not foreseen that in many cases
bodily enfeeblement would be caused |
which no amour. of grammar and geo.
graphy can compensate for. Nor did it
occur to the practical politicians who pro-
vided compulsory load-line for merchant
vessels, that the pressure of ship
interests would habitually cause the put
ting of the load-line at the very highest
limit, and that from precedent to prece-
dent, tending ever in the same direction,
the load-line would gradually rise-as from
good authority l learn that it has already
done. Legislators who, some forty years
ago, by Act of Parliament compelled rail-
way companies to supply cheap locomotion,
would have ridiculed the belief, had it betn
expressed, that eventually their act would
punish the companies which improved the
supply; and yet this was the result to
companies which began to carry third-class
passengers by fast trains, since penalty
to the amount of the passenger duty was
inflicted on them for every third class pas
senger SO carried To which instance con-
corning railways add far more striking
one disclosed by comparing the railway
policies of England and France. the law
makers who provided for the ultimate laps
ing of French railways to the State never
conceived the possibility tina. inferior trav-
cling facilities would result-did not fore.
see that reluctance to depreciate the value
of property eventually coming to the State
would negative the authorization of COM
peting lines, and that in the absence of
competing lines locomotion would be rela.
lively costly. slow and infrequent for, as
Sir Thomas Fsrrar has shown, the traveller
in England has great advantages over the
French traveller in the economy, swiftness
and frequency with which hi ourneys can
be made From the Popular Science
Monthly for April.