distinctly modern is that against sales in bulk, and against department stores; more striking still is the statute, already passed in Wisconsin and Virginia, forbidding all tips, commissions, or private advantages secured by any servant or agent in carrying on the business of his principal, his master, or the person with whom he deals; the statute even forbids a gratuity intentionally given directly from the one to the other.  It is hard to see how the last clause of the law can be held constitutional, any more than the laws forbidding department stores, although such commissions may be forbidden to be given “unbeknownst.”

Weights and measures are standardized by the Federal government, and to these standards the States in practice all conform, but the legal weight of a bushel or other measure of articles varies widely in the different States, and the State Commissioners on Uniformity of Law have tried in vain to get the matter generally regulated.  At one time the weight of a barrel of potatoes in New York City was fourteen pounds more than it was in Hoboken, across the river.  In Massachusetts the weight of a barrel of onions was increased two pounds to conform with the uniform law recommended to all the States by the commissioners; but a representative in the State Legislature coming from a locality of onion farms lost his seat in consequence, which inspired such terror in other members of the State Legislature that the uniform law was promptly repealed, the weight of the barrel of onions put back at the former figure, and this over the veto of the governor.  It is needless to say that the whole value and object of the whole movement for uniformity is to have actual uniformity.  That is to say, unless the lawyer or citizen reading the statute can be sure that it is uniform with the laws of all other States without taking the trouble to consult them, the reform has no value.  But it has proved almost hopeless to get this through the brain of the average legislator.  The uniform law upon bills and notes, indeed, already mentioned, is treated with more respect; because, as has been said above, they regard that as a matter of business, and they have some respect for the expert knowledge of business affairs possessed by business men.

The licensing of trades might be made a very valuable line of legislation to prevent the fleecing of the ultimate consumer by the middleman.  Our ancestors were of the opinion that the middleman, the regrator, was the source of all evils, and they were also of the opinion that any combination whatever to control the price of an article of food, or other human necessity, or to resell it elsewhere than at its actual market and at the proper time, was a conspiracy highly criminal and prejudicial to the English people; in both of which matters they were, in the writer’s opinion, perfectly right, and far more wise than our modern delusion that “business”—­that is to say, the making of a little more profit from