These great forces are entirely impatient of constitutional principles and somewhat indifferent as to the law, while always very desirous of making new statutes themselves.  But their combined influence is enormous, so much so that almost any cause to which they devote themselves will in the long run succeed; unless, indeed, their attention is diverted to some other need, for it may be suggested that they are somewhat fickle of purpose.  For example, their success in the antislavery movement makes the American history of the nineteenth century; in the prohibition movement they were, in the middle decades of that century, almost entirely successful, and while apparently there was a set-back in the twenty years of individualistic feeling which marked the growth of the Democratic party to an equality with its great rival, the movement of late years seems to have taken on renewed strength, probably on account of the so-called negro question in the South.  And while, as to votes for women, they seem to have made no progress beyond the adoption twenty years ago of women’s suffrage in four new Western States and Territories, this last year, it must be admitted, the movement has taken on a new strength in sympathy with the agitation in England.  There are now already symptoms of a fourth cause—­the reform of marriage, divorce and the laws regulating domestic relations, and the control of children.  It is possible that these matters will be taken up actively in coming decades, and we, therefore, reserve them for a future chapter; this new effort is itself partly bound up with the women’s suffrage movement, and in its latest manifestation—­that of proposing legislation preventing men from marrying without permission from the state—­it is a most picturesque example of that absence of constitutional feeling we have just adverted to.

Now this freedom-of-contract principle is one which, of course, legislation attempting to regulate the labor contract is peculiarly liable to “run up against”; and it is, for this reason, not only or chiefly because “labor” is opposed to the Constitution or because the courts are opposed to “labor,” that so many statutes, passed at least nominally in the interest of labor, have been by them declared unconstitutional.  For instance, it is a primary principle that an English free man of full age, under no disability, may control his person and his personal activities.  He can work six, or four, or eight, or ten, or twelve, or twenty-four, or no hours a day if he choose, and any attempt to control him is impossible under the simplest principle of Anglo-Saxon liberty.  Yet there is possibly a majority of the members of the labor unions who would wish to control him in this particular to-day; and will take for an example that under the police power the state has been permitted to control him in matters affecting the public health or safety, as, for instance, in the running of railway trains, or, in Utah, in labor in the mines.  But freedom of contract in this connection results generally from personal liberty itself; although it results also from the right to property; that is to say, a man’s wages (or his trade, for matter of that) is his property, and the right of property is of no practical use if you cannot have the right to make contracts concerning it.