At a certain period of our development liberty came to mean freedom from restraint by the State for the reason that the State, administered by arbitrary rulers, was, and had been an oppressor. Omnipresent and manifest in the person of its officials, the State came to be looked upon as the principal, if not the sole oppressor. At that juncture it was highly important to takeastand against State interference in order to correct abuses. But when this was accomplished the fight for liberty was by no means won; only the first stage of it was won. The struggle has now to be directed against certain institutions or customs which give to corporations and individuals the power to oppress others. Under an autocracy this struggle is difficult. But when the State has been won over to the side of the people, and is administered by and for the people, it at once becomes possible to increase the liberty of the average citizen by having the State interfere with certain practices, old or new, which curtail that liberty.

The liberty which the opponents of State interference have in mind is only half liberty; it is to be free from undue restraint and violence on the part of the State and its officers; the other half is what Locke broadly terms freedom “from restraint and violence from others.” To provide for the common defence and to suppress violence within the community may be called the primitive functions of the State. When, therefore, we call upon the government to broaden the liberties of the individual by preventing his more powerful neighbor from interfering unduly with him, we are not asking of it anything new. It is only a new dress which the old problem has put on.