“to serve the state”
March 13, 2010
Michael: The foundations for state ownership of human beings predates the New Deal years. As early as 1905, in the case of Lochner v. New York (a case striking down a state law regulating the number of hours people could work in bakeries), Justice Harlan wrote a dissenting opinion, in which he would have upheld such legislation. Excessive hours, he argued, “. . . may endanger the health, and shorten the lives of the workmen, thereby diminishing their physical and mental capacity to serve the state. . . .”
Thus do efforts by the state to preserve and promote our health serve the same purpose as a rancher’s interests in caring for his cattle prior to their shipment to the slaughterhouse!
Butler Shaffer was Professor Emeritus at Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918–1938, Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival, and Boundaries of Order. His latest book is The Wizards of Ozymandias.
Children Belong to the State — 1860s