ts,
diametrically opposite doctrines now prevail. Law and government do
not undertake to prescribe by whom any social or industrial operation
shall or shall not be conducted, or what modes of conducting them
shall be lawful. These things are left to the unfettered choice of
individuals. Even the laws which required that workmen should serve
an apprenticeship, have in this country been repealed: there being
ample assurance that in all cases in which an apprenticeship is
necessary, its necessity will suffice to enforce it. The old theory
was, that the least possible should be left to the choice of the
individual agent; that all he had to do should, as far as
practicable, be laid down for him by superior wisdom. Left to himself
he was sure to go wrong. The modern conviction, the fruit of a
thousand years of experience, is, that things in which the individual
is the person directly interested, never go right but as they are
left to his own discretion; and that any regulation of them by
authority, except to protect the rights of others, is sure to be
mischievous. This conclusion, slowly arrived at, and not adopted
until almost every possible application of the contrary theory had
been made with disastrous result, now (in the industrial department)
prevails universally in the most advanced countries, almost
universally in all that have pretensions to any sort of advancement.
It is not that all processes are supposed to be equally good, or all
persons to be equally qualified for everything; but that freedom of
individual choice is now known to be the only thing which procures
the adoption of the best processes, and throws each operation into
the hands of those who are best qualified for it. Nobody thinks it
necessary to make a law that only a strong-armed man shall be a
blacksmith. Freedom and competition suffice to make blacksmiths
strong-armed men, because the weak-armed can earn more by engaging in
occupations for which they are more fit. In consonance with this
doctrine, it is felt to be an overstepping of the proper bounds of
authority to fix beforehand, on some general presumption, that
certain persons are not fit to do certain things. It is now
thoroughly known and admitted that if some such presumptions exist,
no such presumption is infallible. Even if it be well grounded in a
majority of cases, which it is very likely not to be, there will be a
minority of exceptional cases in which it does not hold: and in those
it