The greatest mass of legislation is, of course, that upon mechanic’s liens, which are burdensome to a degree that is vexatious, besides being subject to amendment almost every year.  In a general way, no land-owner is free from liability for the debt of any person who has performed labor or furnished materials on the buildings placed upon the land, even without the knowledge or consent of the land-owner in some States, though in one or two instances, notably in California, such legislation has been carried to such an extreme as to make it unconstitutional.

The matter of nuisances has been already somewhat covered.  Legislation extending the police power and declaring new forms or uses of property to be a nuisance is, of course, rapidly increasing in all States.  The common-law nuisance was usually a nuisance to the sense of smell or a danger to life, as, for instance, an unsanitary building or drain.  Noise, that is to say, extreme noise, might also be a nuisance, and in England the interference with a man’s right to light and air.  Legislation is now eagerly desired in many States of this country to make in certain cases that which is a nuisance to the sense of sight also a legal nuisance, as, for instance, the posting of offensive bills on the fences, or the erection of huge advertising signs in parks or public highways.  Such a law was, however, held unconstitutional in Massachusetts.  There is some legislation against the blowing of steam whistles by locomotives, although I believe none against the morning whistle of factories, and some against the emission of black smoke in specified durations or quantities.

But perhaps the most important legislation affecting simple matters of business other than the line of statutes already mentioned, making new negotiable instruments and controlling the title of property by the possession of a bill of exchange, bill of lading, warehouse or trust receipt, are those statutes prohibiting the buying of “futures,” or the enforcement of gambling contracts to buy or sell stocks or shares or other commodities without actual or intended change of possession, which we have necessarily referred to in our discussion of restraint of trade (chapter 4).  There is a very decided tendency throughout the country, particularly in the South, to prohibit all buying or selling of futures, that is to say, of a crop not actually sold, or of any article where physical delivery is never intended, and it will be remembered we found plenty of precedent for such legislation in early English statutes.  Gambling contracts may be forbidden only in specified places, such as stock exchanges; and the buying of futures may be specially permitted to favored persons, such as actual manufacturers intending to use the goods; and both such statutes will be held constitutional and not an undue interference with the liberty of contract.  These matters were largely covered by the statutes of forestalling in early times.  Legislation more