Law in this country is effective only when it is the recorded will of a majority. When the zealous few get control of the Legislature, and laws are passed to prevent Sabbath-breaking, or wine-drinking, they succeed only in putting their opinions and provincial prejudices in legal phrase. There was a time when men worked from fourteen to sixteen hours a day. These hours have not been lessened, they have not been shortened by law. The law has followed and recorded, but the law is not a leader and not a prophet. It appears to be impossible to fix wages--just as impossible as to fix the values of all manufactured things, including works of art. The field is too great, the problem too complicated, for the human mind to grasp. To fix the value of labor is to fix all values--labor being the foundation of all values. The value of labor cannot be fixed unless we understand the relations that all things bear to each other and to man. If labor were a legal tender--if a judgment for so many dollars could be discharged by so many days of labor,--and the law was that twelve hours of work should be reckoned as one day, then the law could change the hours to ten or eight, and the judgments could be paid in the shortened days. But it is easy to see that in all contracts made after the passage of such a law, the difference in hours would be taken into consideration. We must remember that law is not a creative force. It produces nothing. It raises neither corn nor wine. The legitimate object of law is to protect the weak, to prevent violence and fraud, and to enforce honest contracts, to the end that each person may be free to do as he desires, provided only that he does not interfere with the rights of others. Our fathers tried to make people religious by law. They failed. Thousands are now trying to make people temperate in the same manner. Such efforts always have been and probably always will be failures. People who believe that an infinite God gave to the Hebrews a perfect code of laws, must admit that even this code failed to civilize the inhabitants of Palestine. It seems impossible to make people just or charitable or industrious or agreeable or successful, by law, any more than you can make them physically perfect or mentally sound. Of course we admit that good people intend to make good laws, and that good laws faithfully and honestly executed, tend to the preservation of human rights and to the elevation of the race, but the enactment of a law not in accordance with a sentiment already existing in the minds and hearts of the people--the very people who are depended upon to enforce this law--is not a help, but a hindrance. A real law is but the expression, in an authoritative and accurate form, of the judgment and desire of the majority. As we become intelligent and kind, this intelligence and kindness find expression in law.