Laws regulate the form, time, and methods of payment in manufactures and mining. Companies sometimes keep stores, and pay the workers in mines and factories in goods instead of money. Such a store in the hands of a philanthropic em ployer might easily be made, without expense to himself, a great boon to his workmen, giving them the benefits of con sumers' cooperation. But the usual result is told by the fact that such stores are often known as "truck stores" and "pluck-me-stores," and heartily disliked by the wage workers. They are most often found where some one large corporation dominates in the community, as in a mining district, and the workers are in a very dependent condition. If the higher prices demanded practically lower real wages, it would seem that the worker had an immediate remedy in his power to de mand higher money wages. Recognizing that this is for the most part an illusion—for it is in just such places that the conditions for free competition are least present—the law in many states prohibits these stores. It regulates also the mess 2 See ch. 24, § 5-7, on the old law of employer's liability.
uring of work, fixing the size of screens and of cars used in coal-mining. The law is especially favorable to the hand laborer in regard to the collection of his wages, requiring monthly or fortnightly or sometimes weekly payments. Me chanics' liens give to workmen in the building trades the first claim upon the products of their labor.
§ 4. Usury laws. The limitation by Jaw of the rate of interest that may be charged affects many persons outside the ranks of wage workers. Usury laws are founkl almost univer sally in civilized lands. By usury was formerly meant any payment for the loan of goods or money ; now it means only excessive payments. In former times moralists artd lawmak ers were opposed to all usury or interest. The for this attitude is not hard to Most loans were made • times of distress. The sources of lendable capital and the c antes of profitable investment were few. But for the last four cen turies there has been on the question of usury a gra al change of opinion, beginning in the commercial centers progressing most rapidly in the countries with the most de veloped industry. A moderate rate of interest is now every where permitted; but in all but a few communities the rate that can be collected is limited by law, and penalties more or less severe are imposed upon the usurious lender.
Usury laws are practically evaded in a number of ways within the letter of the law.* Many persons maintain that they do more harm than good even to the borrower, whom they are designed to protect. In a developed credit economy,
where a regular money market exists, they are superfluous, to say the least, as most loans are made below the legal rate. Such laws, however, have a partial justification. In a small loan market they to some extent protect the weak borrower at the moment of distress from the rapacity of the would-be usurer. There has been great need to check the rapacity of the "loan-shark" in cities. Usury laws are fruits of the 3 See Vol. 1, pp. 292-203.
4 See Vol. 1, p. 304.
social conscience, a recognition of_ the duty to protect the weaker citizen in the period of his direst need. Their utility is diminishing, and at best they are only negative in their action, preventing the needy borrower from borrowing when his need is acute. In many European countries a more posi tive remedy has been found in the provision of public pawn shops. In America a very little has yet been done in this way, and that mostly by private § 5. Public inspection of standards and of foods. The determination and testing of standards of weights and meas ures has long been a function of government. English laws of the Middle Ages forbade false measures and the sale of defective goods, and provided for the inspection of markets in the cities. Usually, the self-interest of the purchaser is the best means of insuring the quality of goods ; but personal inspection by each buyer frequently is difficult and time-con suming, requiring special and unusual knowledge of the prod ucts and special costly testing apparatus. The states and the nation undertake in some eases, therefore, to set minimum standards of quality, and to enforce them by governmental inspection. Government coinage had its origin in this need.
This policy is applied, however, mainly to commodities af fecting health ; its application to art products, except to pro tect the morality of the community, would be difficult or un wise. Recent legislation in many lands and in all of the American states has developed greatly the policy of insuring the purity or the safety of many articles consumed in the home ; notable is the Federal Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. The federal law levying a tax on oleomargarine, how ever, was designed as protective legislation in the interest of the farmer. Public regulation and inspection sometimes raises the price, but the cost is small compared with the con venience and the benefits resulting to the citizen.