The law-making most in the popular mind on this whole question is that concerning pensions.  As is well known, the Federal pension list has swollen to a sum far in excess of the total expense of the standing army of Germany.  An enormous number of Spanish War veterans who never even left the country are being added to the list, and their widows will be after them; the last survivor of such may not die before A.D. 2140, and the States themselves have not lagged far behind, all to the enormous corruption of our citizenship; indeed, one or two more wars (which the very motive of such wholesale pensioning is the more likely to bring on) would bankrupt the nation more rapidly than even our battleships.  Not only that, but there is a distinct tendency to make a privileged class of veterans, and the sons of veterans—­and perhaps we shall find of the sons of sons of veterans—­by giving them preference in civic employment and special education, support, or privileges at the State’s expense.  Sometimes they get pedlar’s licenses for nothing; sometimes they are to be preferred in all civic employment; sometimes they have special schools or asylums as well as soldiers’ homes; sometimes they are given free text-books in the public schools.  The Confederate States have not been behindhand in enacting similar laws for their own soldiers, despite the implied prohibition of the Fourteenth Amendment; but Southern courts have held them void.

The general right to bear arms is frequently restricted by the prohibition of concealed weapons, or of the organization, drilling, and training of armed companies not under State or Federal control, both of which limitations have been held constitutional; and the legislation prohibiting the employment or importation of private armed guards, such as the Pinkerton men, has been already alluded to in our chapter on labor legislation.  The precedent for the latter is to be found in the early English legislation against retainers; that is to say, the armed private guard, or “livery,” of the great noblemen; whence is derived the custom of putting servants in livery.  The legislation against private drill companies is closely allied, and had a somewhat amusing test in Chicago where, during a labor strike, a number of the strike sympathizers organized a so-called drill company and furnished themselves with guns, for the purpose really of intimidating the public and helping the law-breakers.  Unfortunately it so happened, for this purpose, that the first time they sallied forth with sword and musket on warfare bent, they were stopped by one or two policemen on the nearest street corner, taken to the station-house, deprived of their arms, and locked up for the night.  The next morning a fine was imposed upon their captain, who appealed to the United States Supreme Court without success.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Presser v.  Illinois, 116 U.S. 252.]