Athletes, Taxes, and Inflation; W. M. Curtis

[197 ] WARDS OF THE GOVERNMENT t'J :J)san RU448tt THE constitutions of former American slave states gener ally specified that the masters must provide their slaves with adequate housing, food, medical care and old-age benefits. The Mississippi Constitution contained this addi tional sentence: The legislature shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves ... [except] where the slave shall have rendered the State some distinguished service; The highest honor that Mississippi could offer a man for distinguished service to his country was personal· re sponsibility for his own welfare! His reward was freedom to find his own job and to have his own earnings, freedom to be responsible for his own housing, freedom to arrange for his own medical care, freedom to save for his own old age. In short, his reward was the individual opportunities -and the personal responsibilities-that have always dis tinguished a free man from a dependent.