Part 37 (1/2)
_Journal American Medical a.s.sociation_, Feb. 26, 1910.
III
EXTRACTS FROM EDICT OF LOUIS XVI, 1776, ABOLIs.h.i.+NG THE GUILDS[230]
Louis, etc. We owe it to our subjects to a.s.sure them the full and complete enjoyment of their rights; we owe that protection especially to that cla.s.s of men who, possessing nothing but their labor and industry, above all others have the need and right of employing to the limit of their capacity their sole resources for subsistence.
We have viewed with pain the multiplied blows which have been struck at this natural and common right of ancient inst.i.tutions, blows which neither time, nor opinion, nor even the acts emanating from the authority, which seems to have sanctioned them, have been able to make legitimate.
[After describing the vicious effects of the guild monopoly, it continues:]
... Some persons ... contend that the right of labor is a royal right, one that the Prince could sell and that the subjects ought to purchase. We hasten to place beside this another maxim:
G.o.d, by giving to men needs and making them dependent upon the resources of labor, has made the right of labor the property of all men, and that property is primary, the most sacred and most imprescriptable of all.
We regard it as one of the first obligations of our justice, and as an act in every way worthy of our beneficence, to emanc.i.p.ate our subjects from all their restraints which have been laid upon that inalienable right of humanity. Wherefore, we will to abolish the arbitrary inst.i.tutions which do not permit the indigent to live by their labor; which exclude the s.e.x whose weakness implies greatest needs and fewest resources ... which stifle emulation and industry and make useless the talents of those whom circ.u.mstances exclude from admission into the guild; which deprive the state and art of all the advantages which foreigners might furnish....
FOOTNOTES:
[230] Translation taken from ”Turgot and the Six Edicts,” by R.P.
Shepherd, 1903, pp. 182, 186-7.
IV
POLICE COMMISSIONER BINGHAM
Declaring that ”law-breaking is the easiest and the most lucrative business in New York for the work involved,” Police Commissioner Bingham yesterday forwarded his annual report to Mayor McClellan.
After stating that law-breaking in the city is an easy and lucrative business, the Commissioner continued:
”Its profits for slight effort are enormous and law-breaking has been able to intrench itself behind such a rampart of legislation and highly paid lawyers that the forces of law and order are placed in the astonis.h.i.+ng position of being actually on the defensive against the law-breakers. Law-breakers and their highly paid lawyers frequently fool even the courts into giving them protection against the police on the grounds of illegal interference, or oppression.
”The howl of innocence is never so loud as when raised by crooks, and this includes not only the actual criminals, but their friends and protectors, crooked politicians. How otherwise is it possible for prizefights to be held in New York city, in spite of the earnest efforts of the police to prevent them? How otherwise is it possible for places positively known by the police to be gambling resorts to be conducted, and to obtain injunctions restraining the police from interfering with them?
”The foregoing is far from saying that the police force of New York is incompetent, or not able to cope with the situation. The police force is competent, short-handed though it is. Its activity and efficiency are proved by the very resistance given it by law-breakers, for the better the work done by the police, the more stubborn is the resistance they meet with from law-breakers.”
As an example of what the police have to cope with the Commissioner mentions the recent Sunday-closing incident, where a court decision was handed down, and enforced, and the Aldermen straightway amended the law. He then asks: ”How then can the police execute the law, when there seems to be so much doubt as to what the law really is?”
Gen. Bingham continues:
”These points are necessary in order that scheming politicians may be deprived of any possibility of summarily getting rid of an honest commissioner and in order that the honest men of the police force may be encouraged. The men of the force to-day are not quite sure who is their real boss--the 'machine' or the police commissioner. If once satisfied that it is the commissioner, with a long term and only removable on publication of charges, they will obey him.”
Legislation requiring persons who sell any sort of dangerous weapons to record the date and hour of the sale, and report it, with the name and address of the buyer, to the police, is suggested, as well as a daily report from p.a.w.nbrokers, giving the date, hour, and other particulars of their transactions. This, the Commissioner says, is the custom in other large cities.