LEGAL ANALYSIS 65 



By contrast, in the West Coast Hotel case, the court upheld the 

 Washington State law. saying: 



"With full recognition of the earnestness and vigor which characterize 

 the prevailing opinion in the Adkins case, we find it impossible to reconcile 

 that ruling with these well-considered declarations. What can be closer to 

 the public interest than the health of women and their protection from 

 unscrupulous and overreaching employers? And if the protection of women 

 is a legitimate end of the exercise of state power, how can it be said that 

 the requirement of the payment of a minimum wage fairly fixed in order 



to meet the verv necessities of existence is not an admissible means to that 



end^*'^8 



A 1949 case shows the application of these considerations to 

 the state restrictions upon types of employment: In Daniel w Family 

 Security Life Ins. Co.,-^"^ the court sustained a South Carolina statute 

 which prohibited life insurance companies from also engaging in the 

 undertaking business and the undertakers from acting as agents for 

 the sale of life insurance. Even though the complaining company 

 was the only company in South Carolina which was selling a sort of 

 ''funeral insurance" and also engaged in the undertaking business, 

 the court nevertheless sustained the statute, saying: 



"The South Carolina legislature might well have concluded that funeral 

 insurance, although paid in cash, carried the same evils that are present 

 in policies payable in merchandise or services: the beneficiary's tendency 

 to deliver the policy's proceeds to the agent-undertaker for whatever the 

 money will buy. whether or not an expensive ceremony is consistent with 

 the needs of the survivors ... It is said that the 'insurance lobby' obtained 

 this statute from the South Carolina legislature. But a judiciary must 

 judge by results, not by the varied factors which may have determined 

 legislators' votes. We cannot undertake a search for motive in testing 

 constitutionality . . . We are not equipped to decide desirability; and a 

 court cannot eliminate measures which do not happen to suit its tastes if 

 it seeks to maintain a democratic system. The forum for the correction of 

 ill-considered legislation is a responsive legislature. We cannot say that 

 South Carolina is not entitled to call the funeral insurance business an evil. 

 Nor can we say that the statute has no relation to the elimination of those 

 evils. There our inquiry must stop."'^^ 



The licensing of persons to engage in particular businesses has 

 been treated by the United States Supreme Court in cases other than 

 the Daniel case just discussed, but, on the whole, these cases show 

 the same shift in emphasis from being highly protective during the 



28. 300U. S. at398. 



29. 336U. S. 220 (1949). 



30. M at 222 and 224. 



