Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Section 4. Limitations on Freedom of Contract. — This freedom is legal rather than economic and practical, and has been called a legal fiction, a designation which appears just in view of the widespread manifestation of a purpose to interfere with and restrict it by legislative action. The man without invested capital requires the constant return from his labor in order that his own needs and those of his dependents may be met; while the employer, who may as imperatively require labor for the conduct of his business, still has between him and immediate want a reserve fund which makes him the economic superior of the average man seeking employment. To lessen this inequality, organized labor provides "out-of-work" and "strike" funds, to tide the membership over the period of unemployment. The rules of labor organizations also restrict the free action of their members, while society at large proceeds by way of legislation, seeking to fix the conditions of employment, either generally, or for specific industries or groups of industries. There is now a very considerable body of such legislation relating to the modes and times of paying wages, and, on public works, the rate of wages; to the hours of labor, the condition of working places, the guarding of machinery, the employment of women and children, and much also that would not come within the scope of statutory regulation were it not for the recognized difference between the average employer and the average employee in freedom to choose or reject the conditions of employment. Of wider general scope, but of less importance as actually affecting the contract of employment, are provisions found in the codes of a few states, taken from the work of a commission appointed by the state of New York in the year 1857, to draft a code for that... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.