All such laws as these are protective legislation, in that they depart from the rule of free trade taken in its broadest sense.  It does not follow, however, that all these laws stand or fall together.  The justification of such measures is limited and relative, and therefore of varying strength.  All protective measures are alike in that the free choice of one citizen is forbidden by law in the supposed interest of some other citizen who is to be “protected.”  While the purpose of the tariff is economic and political, in a large majority of social laws the moral purpose is fundamental.  It is the demand of humanity that competition be placed upon a higher plane.  Most social legislation is to protect the weak from being forced into contracts, or from living in conditions injurious to their welfare and happiness.  The justification for these limitations upon the right of private property, upon the free choice of the individual, upon “free competition,” must be found in the social result secured.  The best test of social protective laws is their contribution to a higher independence and to a freer competition on a higher, more worthy, and more humane plane.

Sec. 10. #Training in the trades#.  Free elementary and secondary education has become the all but unquestioned public policy in the American commonwealths.  The main motive for it has been the belief that education in books is a necessity for good citizenship in a republic.  At the same time it has been thought that the training of the school would help the child to earn a living.  This appears to have been true so long and so far as it was combined with, or supplemented by, industrial training on the farm, in the home, and through apprenticeship in the manual trades, as once was so prevalent.  But industrial conditions have changed.  Most of the old-time education of the schools has now little relation to the industrial life of the great majority of the children, for few enter clerical or professional callings.  Germany was the first nation to recognize the new educational need (in fact, never as urgent there as here) and to provide for systematic and efficient training in all the industrial arts.  Since the beginning of the century the American public has been awaking to the needs of the situation.  We appear to be on the eve of a great development in industrial training that will equip youth for more efficient life in business and in the home, either in rural or in urban conditions.

Sec. 11. #Prevalence of unemployment.# Many other forms of social legislation on behalf of the common man might well deserve, did time and space permit, a larger measure of the economic student’s attention.  However, excepting the subjects treated in the next two chapters, the one remaining that is most important at this time is the problem of unemployment.