708 JOURNAI, OF FORESTRY 



its organizations, its methods, its circumstances change, an answer to 

 your inquiry involves as much the foresight of a seer as the research 

 and deliberation of a lavi^yer. Especially is this so, as our courts have 

 recognized the necessity of measuring the validity of such statutes by 

 the demands of the times, rather than by the rigidity of written con- 

 stitutions. They have held a law an unconstitutional attempt to exer- 

 cise the police power, and a few years later a similar enactment valid 

 because of circumstances arising since the first decision, or of evidence 

 of critical conditions existing at the time of the prior determination 

 but not then brought to the attention of the court. 



A striking example of such divergent decisions presents itself in the 

 cases of People v. Williams (189 N. Y. 131), decided in 1907, and 

 People V. Charles Schweinler Press (314 N. Y. 395), decided in ]915. 

 in the Williams case a statute of 1903 forbidding the employment of 

 adult women in factories before six o'clock in the morning and after 

 nine o'clock in the evening was held inimical to the constitutional pro- 

 visions guaranteeing to every citizen freedom of lawful employment, 

 and as discriminative against female citizens in denying them equal 

 rights with men. The opinion in the second case asserts that while the 

 statutes in both cases are not substantially different in purpose, yet 

 the two cases may be really and substantially differentiated, and says : 



"So, as it seems to me, in view of the incomplete manner in which 

 the important question underlying this statute — the danger to women 

 of night work in factories — was presented to us in the Williams case, 

 we ought not to regard its decision as any bar to a consideration of the 

 present statute in the light of all the facts and arguments now pre- 

 sented to us and many of which are in addition to those formerly pre- 

 sented, not only as a matter of mere presentation, but because they 

 have been developed by study and investigation during the years which 

 have intervened since the Williams decision was made. There is no 

 reason why we should be reluctant to give effect to new and additional 

 knowledge upon such a subject as this even if it did lead us to take 

 a different view of such a vastly important question as that of public 

 health or disease than formerly prevailed. Particularly do I feel 

 that we should give serious consideration and great weight to the fact 

 that the present legislation is based upon and sustained by an investiga- 

 tion by the legislature deliberately and carefully made through an 

 agency of its own creation, the present factory investigating com- 

 mission." 



Thus it is manifest that the necessary consideration of existing, or 

 seriously apprehended exigencies, rather than adjudicated precedents, 



