lating labor, factories, mines, or machinery,
and will be accordingly treated in that connection. Laws protecting
the public against fraud, which from earliest times has been a branch
of police legislation, have been of late years numerous, principally
in connection with the prohibition of dealing in futures or sales on
margin, of sales of goods in bulk without due precautions and notice
to creditors, of the issue of trading stamps or other device tending
to mislead the public. Some States have prohibited department stores,
but this legislation has been held unconstitutional, though the early
English labor statutes forbidding to any person more than one trade or
mystery will by the historical student be borne in mind. Usury laws,
of course, are still frequent, but decreasing in number with the
increasing modern tendency to allow freedom of contract in this as
in other matters, except only to such persons as, for instance,
pawn-brokers, who peculiarly require police regulation.

Coming to statutes which merely facilitate business as it now exists,
by far the most important movement has been the successful work of the
State Commissioners on Uniformity of Law in getting their negotiable
instrument act passed in nearly all the States, and in several already
their uniform law statute on sales, only recommended in 1907. Some
progress has been made in getting a uniform standard of weights and
measures, and there is an increasing tendency to prescribe specific
weights and markings for packages--possibly unconstitutional
legislation. Still more important as a change in previously existing
law has been the increasing tendency to make documents other than
bills and notes negotiable. Perhaps this is a matter which requires
explanation to the lay reader.

The early Anglo-Saxon law could not conceive of ownership of property
as distinct from possession, and to their simple minds, when ownership
was once acquired it was impossible to divest the owner of his
property by any symbolical delivery. Hence the very early statutes
making fraudulent sales or conveyances of property without actual
and visible change of possession. The notion of a symbol, a paper or
writing, which should represent that property would probably have
impressed them like a spell or charm in a child's fairy tale. Even
theft with asportation could not alter property rights, even in
favor of innocent purchasers, when the owner did not intend to part
therewith. A mome