Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/464

moved at will from the center of the great city where they have been confined in the slums to the broad areas of the suburbs where, under better conditions of life, the same work may be conducted even in their households. Is it to be pretended that by the power of legislation the State constable may enter the household of a free citizen of this country and may prescribe to him, his wife, and his children how they shall work and what number of hours they shall operate the loom, the knitting-machine, the sewing-machine, or any other of the appliances which may be set in motion by electrical power, lighted by electric light, and directed by electrical speech at the touch of a button in the wall? If the State constable may not enter the household, may not invade the home, he may not enter the factory or invade "the close," to use the old-time term cited by Lord Camden, where men and women may choose to work according to their own will and to control their own time according to their own judgment.

One may not defend this abuse of legislation under the pretense that it comes within the police power of the State. True, the Supreme Court of the United States has left these matters up to this time to State legislation, but its justices have more than once laid down the rule under which the Legislatures must act or else the supreme power of the land may forbid any restriction upon personal liberty.^[1]

In view of the certainty with which these principles have been laid down and will be maintained by all the courts of this country, may it not be judicious to put an end to the continual attempts of sentimentalists, of pseudo-reformers, and of unenlightened workmen, to impair the personal liberty of adult men and women and to take from them their right of free contract by an appeal to the courts of highest jurisdiction?

 

---

---

 

Among the facts which Mr. Hugh Nevill cited at the International Congress of Orientalists to illustrate the theory of a philological connection between Egypt and India, was the use of rice-boats by the Goyi caste of Ceylon, which curiously recalls the oracle-boats of Egypt. Rice was still pounded for ceremonial festivals in these boats of stone or wood, while at the ruins of Amrajapura large stone boats were found of dates between b. c. 200 and a. d. 400, which were used to hold rice for the royal alms. The use of an image of Kâmadhenu, the celestial cow, among the Tamils of southern India and Ceylon, must be regarded as a survival of Isis-worship. The image was used as a car at Mulaition, to support an image of Tântondiswara, or Siva, the self-created. The myth and custom were of obscure antiquity, the celestial cow typifying, in southern Indian mythology, the fertility of Nature. The author did not assert that the affinity observed between Egypt and India came from the former place to the latter; for it might or might not date from a time and place before Isis-worship reached its great seat in Egypt.

---

1. Calder vs. Bull, 3 Dal., 386 (p. 388).