58 SALMON GEAR LIMITATION 



reasonable relation between whether the applicant was Chinese or 

 of other racial background and this purpose of the ordinance. 



This case, Yick Wo v. Hopkins, has served as the leading case 

 in the application of the Equal Protection Clause, having been 

 found useful upon a much wider basis than solely racial discrimina- 

 tion cases. Thus, in the realm of regulation of economic activity, 

 a substantial body of law has developed around the clause and its 

 first application in the Yick Wo case. 



It should also be emphasized that the history of the Supreme 

 Court's attitude toward governmental regulation of economic activity 

 in the last part of the nineteenth century and the first part of the 

 twentieth century has shown a very substantial change. It cannot 

 be denied but that, through both the Due Process and the Equal 

 Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme 

 Court had been very protective of business activity from governmental 

 control for a substantial period of time lasting at least up into the 

 1930's, particularly in the latter part of that period. Because of the 

 important and wide-ranging efi'ect of the change brought about in 

 the 1930's upon the Court in its attitude on these matters, the best 

 and really only representative illustrations of the current application 

 of the Equal Protection Clause are found in decisions which start 

 at about that time and continue to the present. 



Not that the principle has changed from Yick Wo; indeed, it 

 has not. Only the degree of tolerance toward legislative judgment 

 has increased, for the post- 1935 court has been much more willing 

 to find that the legislature could have seen a reasonable relation 

 between the classifications which a statute effected and the deter- 

 mined ultimate purpose of the statute. 



Illustrative of the earlier cases is Smith v. Cahoon,'^ decided in 

 1931. In this case a Florida statute required, among other things, 

 a bond or insurance coverage to protect the traveling public to be 

 posted or carried by all carriers of goods, both common carriers 

 and private contract carriers. The statute excepted, however, all 

 carriers of agricultural products, dairy products, and certain fish 

 products. The court invalidated the statute, seeing no relationship 

 between what the product carried might be and the necessity for 

 carrying insurance to protect the public. [It might be asked here to 

 consider what the court would have done had there been a showing 



4. 283 U.S. 553 (1931 ). 



