Perhaps the most dangerous tendency, at least to conservative ideas, is the increasing one to take the children away from the custody of the parents, or even of the mother, and place them in State institutions.  Indeed, in some Western States it would appear that the general disapproval of the neighbors of the method employed by parents in bringing up, nurturing, educating, or controlling their children, is sufficient cause for the State authorities to step in and disrupt the family by removing the children, even when themselves unwilling, from the home to some State or county institution.  Any one who has worked much in public charities and had experience with that woeful creature, the institutionalized child, will realize the menace contained in such legislation.

Finally, it should be remembered that throughout the United States men are universally liable for their wives’ debts, short of some quasi-legal separation; on the other hand, wives are never liable for the debts of their husbands.

XVIII

CRIMINAL LAW AND POLICE

There is no very general tendency toward new legislation in matters of felony, and many States are still content to remain with the common law.  Such legislation as there is is mainly concerned with the protection of women and children, alluded to in the last chapter.  In matters of less serious offences, of legislation creating misdemeanors or merely declaring certain acts unlawful, there are three main lines:  First, legislation usually expressive of the common law against conspiracies of all sorts, combinations both of individuals and of capital, already fully discussed.  Next, the general line of legislation in the interest of the health of the public, such as pure food and drug laws, and examination for trade or professional licenses; and finally laws protecting the individual against himself, such as liquor and anti-cigarette or anti-cocaine laws.  It is hardly necessary to more than illustrate some of these matters.  Then there are the laws regulating punishment for crime, laws for probation or parole, indeterminate sentences, etc., all based on the modern theory that reform, not retribution or even prevention, is the basis of penology.  Such laws have been held constitutional, even when their result is to arbitrarily increase a man’s sentence for crime on account of his past or subsequent conduct.  Finally, and most important, there is the legislation regulating the actual trial of cases, indictments, juries, appeals,—­the law of court procedure, civil as well as criminal, which for convenience we may consider in this chapter.

Of the first sort of legislation, we have noted that in many States adultery, in many States simple drunkenness, in other States mere single acts of immorality, are made felonies.  In 1892 the State laws against food adulteration begin, which, by 1910, have covered milk, butter, maple sugar, and many other subjects.  By the Federal pure-food law of 1906, applying to Interstate commerce in such articles, it became advisable for the States to adopt the Federal Act as a State law; also for the sake of uniformity a few States have had the intelligence to do so.  The trades of fat-rendering and bone-boiling are made nuisances by statute.