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Show Government in United States Tending Toward Regulatory Excess By ALBERT C. RITCHIE, Governor of Maryland. The United States is passing from a government of law to a government govern-ment of men and a power that often approaches tyranny has been vested in the federal government. The government is no longer the creature and protector of our individual rights, but is rapidly becoming dictator of them. Today local self-government furnishes the only efficient, effective, effec-tive, workable basis on which the diversified and changing problems in our diversified and changing land can ever be practically settled. The American government has become the most regulatory in the Western world, outside of Russia and Italy. Inspectors and spies and official regulators follow the American from the day he takes his first nourishment. Here he is told what he may eat, there what he may smoke and everywhere what he may drink. What he may read or write or see on the 6tage is prescribed, too; and, not content with this, his government advises ad-vises him how to hang his curtains in his home, what meat to cook for his Christmas dinner and, not two months ago, the Department of Agriculture Agricul-ture distributed throughout the country a treatise entitled, "A Pocket Essay on Kissing." The growing contempt for law is attributable in a large measure to this unholy zeal for more law. Those at least who knew what their rights were under a government of law often do not know under this government of men whether they have any rights at all. |