14 STATK COMMISSION OF HORTICULTURE. 



QUARANTINE LAWS. 



GENERAL REMARKS. 



The horticultural laws of California are the most complete and 

 effective measures ever enacted for the protection and promotion of an 

 agricultural industry. While the paramount element of these acts is 

 the control of insect pests and plant diseases, the laws also authorize 

 broad policies and wide activities toward the improvement and exten- 

 sion of horticulture. California was the first state or country to apply 

 the principles of police regulation to the protection of crops, and this 

 idea has been successfully applied through statutory legislation, sus- 

 tained by the highest courts and made a part of the .jurisprudence of 

 the State, as witnessed in the use of the same principle in our later 

 health laws and measures for the protection of the live stock industry. 

 Furthermore, the influence of what we call our quarantine and other 

 compulsory measures has permeated Florida, Arizona and some foreign 

 countries, and may soon be recognized by the United States in the adop- 

 tion of a Federal quarantine statute designed to protect all our states 

 and territories from the invasion of plant disease and insect infestation. 



With all our advancement in providing police protection to our soil 

 industries, we have not been able to reach by law one of the most essen- 

 tial features of quarantine work, namely, to legalize the searching of 

 private baggage and effects of passengers coming into the State. This 

 deficiency is caused by difficulties apparently fundamental, for the state 

 quarantine officer has been advised that the question of personal liberty 

 is involved in granting the right to open baggage, and that personal 

 belongings can not be treated as freight or other articles in transporta- 

 tion. A passenger by boat or train may have personal papers, jewelry 

 or other effects that he does not wish subjected to inspection and public 

 gaze, and his rights are protected in this regard unless the laws expressly 

 provide for the inspection of his personal effects. No such authority 

 has been granted by our horticultural quarantine acts, and until such 

 power is given our quarantine laws must remain thus far unsatisfactory. 



Attention has been called, under Quarantine Order Xo. 6. to a most 

 effective arrangement for inspecting baggage under circumstances exist- 

 ing at our maritime ports. This plan operates well where baggage is 

 landed at the state line, and where the opportunity for its examination 

 can be secured by law, or by contracts such as are now in use at our 

 seaports. In the case of articles coming over the international line from 

 Mexico, for example, the circumstances are altogether different. There 

 the baggage is carried over the international line into Texas or Arizona, 

 where California laws are inoperative and her officials without authority 

 even were laws enacted authorizing inspection of private effects. No 

 such laws granting the right of search exist, and a corps of quarantine 

 inspectors stationed on the state line at Yuma would have no authority 

 to open packages for inspection. In the absence of law authorizing 

 baggage inspection; in the lack of authority to act outside the state; in 

 the physical inability to meet all the trains crossing our borders ; in the 

 decision of the Attorney General that an officer of the state can not 

 accept free or reduced transportation upon railroads, even for inspection 

 purposes without automatically dismissing himself from the service, and 



