employments, such as lotteries and the sale of intoxicating liquors, which were then considered to be legitimate, have since fallen under the ban of public opinion, and are now either altogether prohibited or made subject to stringent police regulations. The power to do this has been repeatedly affirmed by this court. While the business of mining coal and manufacturing iron began in Pennsylvania as early as 1716, and in Virginia, North Carolina and Massachusetts even earlier than this, both mining and manufacturing were carried on in such a limited way and by such primitive methods that no special laws were considered necessary, prior to the adoption of the constitution, for the protection of the operatives; but, in the vast proportions which these industries have since assumed, it has been found that they can no longer be carried on with due regard to the safety and health of those engaged in them without special protection against the dangers necessarily incident to these employments. In consequence of this, laws have been enacted in most of the states designed to meet these exigencies and to secure the safety of persons peculiarly exposed to these dangers. Within this general category are ordinances providing for fire-escapes for hotels, theaters, factories and other large buildings, a municipal inspection of boilers, and appliances designed to secure passengers upon railways and steamboats against the dangers necessarily incident to these methods of transportation. In states where manufacturing is carried on to a large extent, provision is made for the protection of dangerous machinery against accidental contact, for the cleanliness and ventilation of working-rooms, for the guarding of well-holes, stairways, elevator-shafts, and for the employment of sanitary appliances. In others, where mining is the principal industry, special provision is made for the shoring up of dangerous walls, for ventilation shafts, bore holes, escapement shafts; means of signaling the surface; for the supply of fresh air and the elimination, as far as possible, of dangerous gases; for safe means of hoisting and lowering cages; for a limitation upon the number of persons permitted to enter a cage; that 1 Stone v. Mississippi (1879), 101 U. S. 814; Douglass v. Kentucky (1897), 168 U. S. 488; Giozza v. Tiernan (1897), 148 U. S. 657; Kidd v. Pearson (1888), 128 U. S. 1, 9 S. Ct. R 6; Crowley v. Christensen (1890), 137 U. S. 86, 11 S. Ct. R. 13. cages shall be covered, and that there shall be fences and gates around the top of shafts, besides other similar precautions." 1 Continuing, the court said: "If it be within the power of a legislature to adopt such means for the protection of the lives of its citizens, it is difficult to see why the precautions may not also be adopted for the protection of their health and morals. It is as much for the interest of the state that the public health should be preserved as that life should be made secure. With this end in view quarantine laws have been enacted in most if not all of the states; insane asylums, public hospitals and institutions for the care and education of the blind established; and special measures taken for the exclusion of infected cattle, rags and decayed fruit. In other states laws have been enacted limiting the hours during which women and children shall be employed in factories; and while their constitutionality, at least as applied to women, has been doubted in some of the states, they have been generally upheld. Upon the principles above stated, we think the act in question may be sustained as a valid exercise of the police power of the state. The enactment does not profess to limit the hours of all workmen, but merely those who are employed in underground mines, or in the smelting, 1 And the court referred to the following statutes as illustrating the exercise of the police power for the preservation of life and health: Digest of Stats. of Arkansas, 1149; California Stats., March 16, 1872, ch. 305; March 27, 1874, ch. 498; March 14, 1881, ch. 72; March 8, 1893, ch. 74; Colorado, Mills' Ann. Stats., vol. 3, Sup., ch. 85; Gen. Stats. of Conn., 1888, secs. 2645-2647; 2263-2272, Rev. Stats. Illinois, 1889, p. 980; Thornton's Indiana Stats. 1897, ch. 98, p. 1652; Gen. Stats. of Kansas, 1897, vol. 2, pp. 813-824; Kentucky Stats. (Barbour & Carroll), ch. 88, p. 951; Mass. Acts May 21, 1891, ch. 350; March 19, 1892, ch. 83; April 25, 1892, ch. 210; June 8, 1892, ch. 352; June 11, 1892, ch. 357; June 3, 1893, ch. 406; June 22, 1894, ch. 508; March 16, 1895, ch. 129; Michigan (Howell's Ann. Stats.), sec. 92096 et seq.; Gen. Stats. of New Jersey, vol. 2, p. 1900 et seq.; Rev. Stats., Code and Gen. Laws of New York, vol. 2, p. 2069; Brightley's Purdon's Digest, Sup. Pennsylvania, 1885-1887, p. 2241 et seq. "These statutes have been repeatedly enforced by the courts of the several states, their validity assumed, and, so far as we are informed, they have been uniformly held to be constitutional." 2 Thus, in the case of Commonwealth v. Hamilton Mfg. Co. (1876), 120 Mass. 383, it was held that a statute prohibiting the employment of all persons under the age of eighteen, and of all women laboring in any manufacturing establishment more than sixty hours per week, violates no contract of the commonwealth implied in the granting of a charter to a manufacturing company, nor any right reserved under the constitution to any individual citizen, and may be maintained as a health or police regulation. reduction or refining of ores or metals. These employments, when too long pursued, the legislature has judged to be detrimental to the health of the employees, and, so long as there are reasonable grounds for believing that this is so, its decision upon this subject cannot be reviewed by the federal courts. While the general experience of mankind may justify us in believing that men may engage in ordinary employments more than eight hours per day without injury to their health, it does not follow that labor for the same length of time is innocuous when carried on beneath the surface of the earth, where the operative is deprived of fresh air and sun-light, and is frequently subjected to foul atmosphere and very high temperature, or to the influence of noxious gases, generated by the processes of refining or smelting." § 686. A far more doubtful exercise of the police power is found in a decision sustaining an act providing that the wages of miners and certain employees shall be paid at least once in every two weeks, in lawful money of the United States, thereby preventing the employee from accepting in pay for his services goods and merchandise or other valuable consideration.1 1 Hancock et al. v. Yaden (1889), 121 Ind. 366, 23 N. E. R. 253. In this case the court said: "The case before us affords an example; for where a man, upon request, performs services for another, the law implies that he shall be paid for them, and paid in money. It needs no positive agree ment to pay in money to entitle a creditor to demand money, for the law decrees that the payment shall be in money. The statutory provision under discussion does no more than enforce this legal right by commanding that men shall not make a contract dispensing with the lawful mode and medium of payment. The authorities to which we have referred, and to which it would be no great task to add others, prove that the law-making power of the state does have authority over the right to contract. That this legislative authority is limited no one doubts, but it is limited only by the constitution. In that instrument are found the only limitations upon the law-making power of the state. Hedderich v. State (1885), 101 Ind. 564, 1 N. E. R. 47; McComas v. Krug (1882), 81 Ind. 327; Beauchamp v. State (1842), 6 Blackf. 299. But no limitation in that instrument so operates as to prevent the law-making power from prohibiting classes of citizens from contracting in advance that the wages of miners shall not be paid in lawful money of the United States. It would be not only unnecessary, but improper, to enter upon the work of ascertaining to what extent the constitution restrains the legislature from regulating or restricting the right to contract; for all that can with propriety be here decided is that it does not restrain the legislature from enacting laws which operate to maintain or protect the medium of payment established by the sovereign power of the nation. The extension of this dangerous doctrine would involve the conclusion that the legislature has the right to declare by law that no employee shall be permitted to accept in payment for his services any consideration other than the lawful currency of the country. It certainly cannot be argued that an act providing that wages must be paid in money rather than in goods has any relation whatsoever to the preservation of peace and It cannot be denied, without repudiating all authority, that the legislature does possess some power over the right to contract, and, if it does, then nothing can be clearer than that this power extends far enough to uphold a statute providing that payment of wages shall be made in money where there is no agreement to the contrary made after the services have been rendered. Whether the legislature may absolutely declare that nothing shall be payment but money we need not inquire, for all that is important here is to decide that it may prohibit a contract from being made in advance, waiving the right to payment in what the law says shall be the medium of payment. We cannot conceive a case in which the assertion of the legislative power to regulate contracts has a sounder foundation than it has in this instance, for here the regulation consists in prohibiting men from contracting in advance to accept payment in something other than the lawful money of the country for the wages they may earn in the future. It is of the deepest and gravest importance to the government that it should unyieldingly maintain the right to protect the money which it makes the standard of value throughout the country. The surrender of this right might put in peril the existence of the nation itself. Suppose that in the years of the war, when gold was worth such an extraordinary premium, the owners of supplies required by the government had, by concerted action, refused to accept anything in payment but coin, would the nation have been powerless to protect what it had decreed should be money? Or again, suppose that the persons holding the needed supplies had refused to take anything but property in exchange, and that it was impossible to procure the species of property demanded, would the government have been helplessly at their mercy? The protection from such evils is in the right to establish and maintain by coercive measures, if need be, what by the law is made money of the nation. We do not use these illustrations for more than their worth. We employ them simply to show the imperious necessity that exists for the retention, in its unbroken entirety, of the power to establish and maintain a standard of value. What is necessary to national or state life the government possesses, and it is for the legislature to judge what measures are essential to the complete and effective exercise of a power which it possesses. It is not simply the government, as a government, that is interested in the power to establish and maintain a standard of value; for to every citizen engaged in any business of life it is of vital importance that there should be a fixed and unchanging standard.. Without it, business, except of the most meagre kind, would be at an end, and commerce would be practically annihilated." order, or life, health or morals. It is a purely arbitrary enactment passed in the supposed interest of the employee, and like all such arbitrary enactments it is likely to prove, in the long run, more detrimental than beneficial to the class it purports to favor. § 687. A division of the supreme court of Missouri, consisting of three judges, reached a similar conclusion, one judge expressing no opinion. The case being transferred to the court en banc, it was held that the law was unconstitutional, one judge dissenting. The court said: "There can be no doubt but that the legislature may regulate the business of mining and manufacturing so as to secure the health and safety of the employees, but that is not the scope of the two sections of the statute now in question. They single out those persons who are engaged in carrying on the pursuits of mining and manufacturing, and say to such persons, you cannot contract for labor payable alone in goods, wares and merchandise. The farmer, the merchant, the builder, and the numerous contractors employing thousands of men may make such contracts, but you cannot. They say to the mining and manufacturing employees, though of full age and competent to contract, still you shall not have the power to sell your labor for meat and clothing alone, as others may. It will not do to say these sections simply regulate payment of wages, for that is not their purpose. They undertake to deny to the persons engaged in the two designated pursuits the right to make and enforce the most ordinary every-day contracts a right accorded to all other persons. This denial of the right to contract is based upon a classification which is purely arbitrary, because the ground of the classification has no relation whatever to the natural capacity of persons to contract. Now it may be that instances of oppression have occurred and will occur on the part of some mine owners and manufacturers, but do they not occur quite as frequently in other fields of labor? Conceding that such instances may and do occur, still that furnishes no reasonable basis for depriving all persons engaged in the two lawful and necessary pursuits of the right to make and enforce every-day contracts. Liberty, as we have seen, includes the right to contract as others may, and to take that right away from a class 1 State v. Loomis et al. (1893), 115 Mo. 307, 22 S. W. R. 350. |