I am not making a new classification; I am merely calling attention to a classification that has come down from the beginning of history.  Many years ago I heard a man from New Zealand tell how a cannibal in that country once supported his claim to a piece of land on the ground that the title passed to him when he ate the former owner.  I accepted this story as a bit of humour, but it accurately describes an historic form of title.  Even among the highly civilized nations governments convey to their subjects or citizens land secured by conquest, the lands being taken from the conquered by the conquerors.  A tramp, so the story goes, being ordered out of a nobleman’s yard, questioned the owner’s title.  The latter explained that the title to the land had come down to him in unbroken line from father to son through a period of 700 years, beginning with an ancestor who fought for it.  “Let’s fight for it again,” suggested the tramp.

To show how ancient is the distinction that I am trying to make clear, I remind you that both the Psalmist and Solomon used the word “brutish” in describing certain kinds of men, and one of the minor prophets calls down wrath upon those who build a city with blood.  Christ, it will be remembered, denounced the hypocrites who devoured widows’ houses and for a pretense made long prayers.

The devouring did not cease with that generation; it is to-day a menace to stable government and to civilization itself.  In times of peace we have the profiteer who is guilty of practices which violate all rules of morality even when they do not actually violate statute law.  In this “Land of the free and home of the brave,” we have been compelled to enact laws to restrain brutishness—­not only laws to prevent assault, murder, arson, the white slave traffic, etc., but also laws to restrain men engaged in legitimate business.  Pure food laws prevent the adulteration of that which the people eat—­men were willing to destroy health and even life in order to add to their profits.  Child labour laws have become necessary to keep employers from dwarfing the bodies, minds and souls of the young in their haste to make larger dividends.

Usury laws are necessary to protect the borrowers from the lenders, and, from occasional violations, we can judge what the condition would be if the very respectable business of banking was not strictly regulated by law.  We have an anti-trust law intended to prevent the devouring of small industries by large ones—­law made necessary by injustice nation-wide in extent.

Congress and the legislatures of the several states are constantly compelled to legislate against so-called “business” enterprises that are being conducted on a brute basis—­some are combinations in restraint of trade, others are merely gambling transactions.  For a generation the agriculturists, who constitute about one-third of our entire population, have been at the mercy of a comparatively small group of market gamblers who, by betting, force prices up or down for their own pecuniary gain.  An anti-option law has been recently enacted after an agitation of nearly thirty years, and also a law regulating the packers.  These are only a few illustrations; they could be multiplied without limit.  They show how unbrotherly society sometimes is even in this highly favoured nation.