MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 131 



sumer unlimited sums of money thereby enhancing great fortunes and 

 driving an enraged public into unknown efforts at self-defense. 



In reply to the question what can be done, one can find but one answer, 

 and that is in bestowing upon an authorized commission the power to 

 fix the maximum prices of commodities which are likely to be subject 

 to manipulation. This would seem to be the only way to safeguard the 

 public from evils which are being perpetrated before remedial steps can 

 be taken under present conditions. The public has witli commendable 

 patience accepted through a goodly period the policy of competitive 

 forces as a means of protection. Courage was stimulated by the creation 

 of a FedAal Trade Commission whose function should be to call upon 

 the carpet the venturesome manipulator, but when two such bold cases 

 of restraint confront us as the recent ones, we are constrained to meditate 

 upon the outcome of this competitive policy, and to wonder if it has 

 not already been the means of intrenching enemies of the welfare of an 

 unsuspecting public. Hazardous as price fixing may seem to be and 

 impracticable as an industrial policy, what else can avail.'' 



Not only, says the defender of the interests, is price fixing as a means 

 of protection an impracticable method of meeting this evil, but it is at 

 variance with our constitution in respect to property rights. This, of 

 course, is the reliance of the corporation against any such heroic remedy 

 as that of fixing prices. 



There can be little doubt that the public and the courts are disposed 

 to set aside this protective agency behind which the property owner 

 has taken refuge time without number and continued to perpetrate un- 

 warranted practices. 



For the present it may suffice if the court shall place many businesses 

 in the class of public utilities where they would be subject to regulation 

 through being of public interest. Doubtless the view of our courts as 

 to the meaning of public business is undergoing change. In a recent 

 case* — German Alliance Insurance Co. vs. Ike Lewis, — the court was 

 unable to give any fixed definite mark of this change from private to 

 public interest. Furthermore, it refused to classify as public businesses 

 only those which had a monopoly or those which had received from the 

 public some special privilege. Justice McKenna, who delivered this 

 opinion, took the broad ground that without either of these distinguishing 

 marks a business might become of public interest through the simple 

 fact of its necessary influence on great numbers of people. 



A second evidence of the attitude of our courts which bears upon this 

 problem is found in their exercise of the police power. It is well 

 established that the state may through this power protect public health, 



*233 U. S. 389, 1914, Young, The New American Government, p. 469. 



