the profits
of the trust that had secured a monopoly; that is an engrossing
trust--covin or alliance, as our ancestors would have called it--"a
gentleman's agreement"--and that it should be done by a reduction of
the tariff on the articles in which that trust dealt; this reduction
to be ordered by the president. When he determined that a trust had
completely engrossed an industry, he might say so by proclamation; and
then the act of Congress should go into effect and the duties upon
that product be abolished, all the protection of the trust taken away.
There is a trouble with such legislation, in that it may be said to
allow the president to make the law; and under our Constitution the
president cannot make laws. The legislative branch and the executive
branch of the government must be kept distinct; and it probably would
be argued by constitutional lawyers, and in this instance by either
party that was not in favor of such legislation, that to reduce the
duties of such a class of goods was a legislative act, and therefore
any such law would be unconstitutional because the president cannot
legislate. But the point I wish to make now in both these cases is the
exact correspondence of the problem; what are remedies to-day were
remedies five hundred years ago. So far we have found nothing new,
either in remedy or offence.

(1349) Now there is a third great line of legislation that we must
consider in connection with these other two, and that is the Statutes
of Labor. It was the custom in early times to attempt to regulate
prices; both of wages and commodities. The first Statute of Laborers
dates from 1349. Its history was economic. They had had a great plague
in England known as the Black Death; and it had carried off a vast
number of people, especially the laboring people. There was naturally
great demand for workers. Laborers were very scarce. It is estimated
that one-third of the entire population had died; and there has never
been a time when wages were so high relatively, that is, when wages
would buy so much for the workingman, as about the middle of the
fourteenth century. But the employers were no fonder of high wages
than they are to-day. All England was used to sumptuary laws, laws
regulating the price of commodities, and villeins still existed. They
were only just beginning to consider agricultural laborers as freemen;
they were used to the notion of exerting a control over laboring men,
who were still often a