are essentially single and entire in their nature (for example, railroad classifications and rates) to be split up merely for purposes of legal jurisdiction and control.  In such matters, therefore, some measure of federal encroachment is inevitable in order that industry and progress shall not be hampered.  The encroachment, however, is more apparent than real.  The industries are national in scope, and all the activities of each are more or less interwoven and interdependent.  Hence state regulation of the intrastate activities may sometimes be overruled as an interference with federal regulation of the interstate commerce.  There is nothing in this which involves any real violation of the Constitution.  It is merely an application of Marshall’s doctrine of implied powers.

Social welfare legislation presents a very different problem.  Some of the most dangerous assaults upon the Constitution to-day are being made in that field.  The leaven of socialistic ideas is working.  Representative government is becoming more paternalistic.  Legislation dealing with conduct and social and economic conditions is being demanded by public sentiment in constantly increasing measure.  Such legislation for the most part affects state police power and lies clearly outside the scope of the powers conferred by the Constitution on the National Government.  Moreover, “the insulated chambers afforded by the several states” (to borrow a phrase of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes) are ideal fields for social experiment.  If an experiment succeed, other states will follow suit.  If it prove disastrous, the damage is localized.  The nation as a whole remains unharmed.  The sponsors for such legislation, however, are seldom content to deal with the states.  Reform was ever impatient.  The state method seems too slow, and the difficulty of securing uniformity too formidable.  Moreover, it often happens that some states are indifferent to the reform proposed or even actively hostile.  Accordingly, recourse is had to Congress, and Congress looks for a way to meet the popular demand.  There being no direct way, and public sentiment being insistent, Congressmen find themselves under the painful necessity of circumventing the Constitution they have sworn to uphold.  The desired legislation is enacted under the guise of an act to regulate commerce or raise revenue, and the task of upholding the Constitution is passed to the Supreme Court.

Such subterfuges, far from arousing public condemnation, are praised by the unthinking as far-sighted statesmanship.  It is popular nowadays to apply the term “forward-looking” to people who would make the National Government an agency for social-welfare work, and to characterize as “lacking in vision” anyone who interposes a constitutional principle in the path of a social reform.  Friends of progress sometimes forget that the real forward-looking man is he who can see the pitfall ahead as well as the rainbow; the man of true vision is one whose view of the stars is steadied by keeping his feet firmly on the ground.