1900. ] HASTINGS— POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 465 
Supreme Court of the state, and the defendants took the case by 
error to the Supreme Court of the United States. 
They asserted that so much of the statute as attempted to require 
the obtaining of license and giving of bond, and to fix a fine if this. 
were not done, and to establish maximum rates of storage was 
unconstitutional and void ; that they were an infringement of sec- 
tions 8 and g of article 1 of the federal constitution giving Congress 
the power to regulate commerce between the states and requiring 
that no preference be given to the ports of any state, the elevator 
being confessedly an instrument of interstate commerce. It was 
also claimed that the fourteenth amendment, in declaring that no 
one should be deprived of property without due process of law, 
prevented any such reduction by statute of rates of storage which 
the elevator had collected for many years. 
In opposition to this assertion of rights in the elevator company 
the police power of the state was invoked, and all the cases before 
mentioned in this discussion cited and a great many more. The 
question considered by the court is stated by Chief Justice Waite 
in the following terms: 
1 «The question to be determined is whether the general assembly of 
Illinois can, under the limitations upon the legislative power of the 
states imposed by the constitution of the United States, fix by law the 
maximum of charges for the storage of grain in warehouses at Chicago, 
and other places in the state having not less than 100,000 inhabitants, in 
which grain is stored in bulk and the grain of different owners mixed 
together in such a manner that the identity of different lots cannot be 
preserved.” 
He considers, first, the objection that the law is a violation of 
the fourteenth amendment, and as this provision, while new in the 
constitution of the United States is as old as Magna Charta and 
has formed a part of every state constitution adopted in America, 
he finds plenty of precedents as to its application. He declares 
the state legislatures now possess all the supremacy of the Parlia- 
ment of Great Britain, except so far as they are limited by having 
granted out of such supremacy the power held by the federal gov- 
ernment, and so far as certain powers are, by the terms of the state 
constitutions, retained by the people. He has no difficulty in 
showing that the power to regulate charges for various quasi-public 
employments has always been asserted by both English and Ameri- 
194 U7. S., 123. 
