§ 9. General grounds of this social legislation. Why are not such matters as we have been discussing safely left to individuals? It is for the interest of every one that his back yard should not be a place of noisome smells and disagreeable sights. But men are at times strangely obstinate, selfish, and neglectful, and through one man's fault a whole community may suffer. The refusal of one man to put a sewer in front of his house may block the improvement of a whole street. The heedlessness of one family may bring an epidemic upon an entire city. There must be a plan, and by law the will of the majority must be imposed upon the unsocial few. Where voluntary cooperation fails, compulsory cooperation often is necessary. Thus health laws, tax laws, and improve ment laws regulate many of the acts of citizens, limit the use of property, and compel men to better social courses against their own wishes and judgments.
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 for bidden 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 con tracts 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.
§ 10. Training in the trades. Free elementary and sec ondary education has become the all but unquestioned public policy in 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 as long and as far as it was combined with, or supplemented by, indus trial training on the farm, in the home, and through appren ticeship 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 train ing in all the industrial arts. Since the beginning of the cen tury the American public has been awaking to the needs of the situation. We appear to be on the eve of a great develop ment in industrial training that will equip youth for more efficient life in business and in the home, either in rural or in urban conditions.
§ 11. Definition of unemployment. Unemployment is the state of a wage worker for the time out of a job. But this definition needs to be further explained and limited if it is to be useful in the discussion of unemployment as an evil calling for social remedy. There must be set aside the cases where the lack of a job is due to one rest-day in seven and to legal holidays, a total of nearly sixty-five days in most American states; to the worker's being on strike; to temporary sickness; finally, and more difficult to distinguish, that due to con tinued disability, physical, mental, or moral, to do the work up to an acceptable standard and to retain a job in the occu pation chosen by the applicant. The first cannot be called a problem, and the others constitute the problems of strikes, of industrial sickness, and of the unemployable respectively.
There still remain some unanswered questions, such, for ex ample, as: whether in seasonal trades (e. g., teaching or the building trades) allowance should be made for normal vaca tions and for slack times, not to be counted as unemployment; and whether lack of work at one's principal occupation is ever or always unemployment, when the person is actually em ployed or can get work at some lower paid employment. The more frequent answer to these questions is in the negative, but this in some cases is almost palpably absurd. Further study is necessary to work out a generally acceptable concept of unemployment.