17 



It sometimes is difficult to fix boundary stones between the private 

 right of property and the police power when, as in the case at bar, we 

 know of few decisions that are very much in point. But it is recognized 

 that the State as quasi sovereign and representative of the interests 

 of the public has a standing in court to protect the atmosphere,- the 

 water, and the forests within its territory, irrespective of the assent or 

 dissent of the private owners of the land most immediately concerned. 

 (Kansas v. Colorado, 180 U. S., 125, 141, 142; S. C., 206 U. S., 46, 99; 

 Georgia v. Tennessee Copper Co., 206 U. S., 230, 238.) What it may 

 protect by suit in this Court from interference in the name of property 

 outside of the State's jurisdiction, one would think that it could pro- 

 tect by statute from interference in the same name within. On this 

 principle of public interest and the police power, and not merely as the 

 inheritor of a royal prerogative, the State may make laws for the preser- 

 vation of game, which seems a stronger case. (Geer v. Connecticut, 

 161 U. S., 519, 534.) 



The problems of irrigation have no place here. Leaving them on one 

 side, it appears to us that few public interests are more obvious, indis- 

 putable and independent of particular theory than the interest of the 

 public of x a State to maintain the rivers that are wholly within it substan- 

 tially undiminished, except by such drafts upon them as the guardian of 

 the public welfare may permit for the purpose of turning them to a more 

 perfect use. This public interest is omnipresent wherever there is a State, 

 and grows more pressing as population grows. It is fundamental, and we 

 are of the opinion that the private property of riparian proprietors can 

 not be supposed to have deeper roots. Whether it be said that such an 

 interest justifies the cutting down by statute, without compensation, in 

 the exercise of the police power, of what otherwise would be private 

 rights of property, or that apart from statute those rights do not go to 

 the height of what the defendant seeks to do, the result is the same. 

 But we agree with the New Jersey courts, and think it quite beyond any 

 rational view of riparian rights that an agreement, of no matter what 

 private owners could sanction the diversion of an important stream out- 

 side the boundaries of the State in which it flows. The private right to 

 appropriate is subject not only to the rights of lower owners but to the 

 initial limitation that it may not substantially diminish one of the great 

 foundations of public welfare and health. 



We are of opinion, further, that the constitutional power of the State 

 to insist that its natural advantages shall remain unimpaired by its citi- 

 zens is not dependent upon any nice estimate of the extent of present use 

 or speculation as to future needs. The legal conception of the necessary 

 is apt to be confined to somewhat rudimentary wants, and there are bene- 

 fits from a great river that might escape a lawyer's view. But the State 

 is not required to submit even to an aesthetic analysis. Any analysis 

 may be inadequate. It finds itself in possession of what all admit to be 

 a great public good, and what it has it may keep and give no one a reason 

 for its will. 



In neither of these cases was there any controversy between the State and 

 National Governments as to their respective powers. In both cases the question 

 at issue was simply the right of the public to restrict the use of private property. 



Eight to Print Forms in the Field- 

 By decision of April 29, 1908, the Comptroller of the Treasury held that the 

 printing of forms necessary for the administration of the National Forests need 

 not be done at the Government Printing Oflice, because the Forest Service is a 

 field service and not an " Executive Deparment " within the meaning of the act 

 of June 12, 1895, section 87 (28 Stat, 622). For the same reason, the Comp- 

 troller said that the provisions of the act of June 30, 1906 (34 Stat., 697, 762), 

 requiring the submission to Congress of annual estimates of the expense of 

 printing and binding for " each of the Executive Departments, their bureaus 

 and offices, and other Government establishments at Washington " do not apply 

 to the Forest Service. 



