legislation, such as the new Inter-state Commerce Law, seems to one party a wholly inadequate attempt to make the exercise of individual rights a little more equal, while it seems to others an egregious violation of the principle itself.  What with reforming legislation on the one hand and the lack of it on the other, the once sweet air of the American political mansion is soured by complaints.  Privileges and discriminations seem to lurk in every political and economic corner.  The “people” are appealing to the state to protect them against the usurpations of the corporations and the Bosses.  The government is appealing to the courts to protect the shippers against the railroads.  The corporations are appealing to the Federal courts to protect them from the unfair treatment of state legislatures.  Employers are fighting trades-unionism, because it denies equal rights to their employers.  The unionists are entreating public opinion to protect them against the unfairness of “government by injunction.”  To the free trader the whole protectionist system seems a flagrant discrimination on behalf of a certain portion of the community.  Everybody seems to be clamoring for a “Square Deal” but nobody seems to be getting it.

The ambiguity of the principle of equal rights and the resulting confusion of counsel are so obvious that there must be some good reason for their apparently unsuspected existence.  The truth is that Americans have not readjusted their political ideas to the teaching of their political and economic experience.  For a couple of generations after Jefferson had established the doctrine of equal rights as the fundamental principle of the American democracy, the ambiguity resident in the application of the doctrine was concealed.  The Jacksonian Democrats, for instance, who were constantly nosing the ground for a scent of unfair treatment, could discover no example of political privileges, except the continued retention of their offices by experienced public servants; and the only case of economic privilege of which they were certain was that of the National Bank.  The fact is, of course, that the great majority of Americans were getting a “Square Deal” as long as the economic opportunities of a new country had not been developed and appropriated.  Individual and social interest did substantially coincide as long as so many opportunities were open to the poor and untrained man, and as long as the public interest demanded first of all the utmost celerity of economic development.  But, as we have seen in a preceding chapter, the economic development of the country resulted inevitably in a condition which demanded on the part of the successful competitor either increasing capital, improved training, or a larger amount of ability and energy.  With the advent of comparative economic and social maturity, the exercise of certain legal rights became substantially equivalent to the exercise of a privilege; and if equality of opportunity was to be maintained, it could not be done by virtue of non-interference.  The demands of the “Higher Law” began to diverge from the results of the actual legal system.