1900.] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. A477 
CHAR THE 2. 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT. 
Among the early cases decided in 1878 was ' Cook vs. Pennsyl- 
vania. A statute of that state passed in 1853 and modified in 1859 
required every auctioneer to pay into the state treasury a percentage 
on all his sales. Seven hundred and fifty-seven and 83-too dollars 
was claimed of Cook on certain foreign merchandise sold by him in 
the original packages. He declined to pay; and the federal court 
said he need not, that the law was so far a state tax on imports as 
to be void and would not be justified as either a police regulation 
or the sale of a state franchise. ‘This seems to us so inevitable a 
conclusion that the fact of the law remaining unchallenged for a 
quarter of a century shows the slowness of perception of the federal 
constitution’s effect on the states. 
In the same year the federal court touched the police power in 
? Fertilizing Co. vs. Hyde Park, this time by way of a modification 
of the Dartmouth College case. The legislature of Illinois had 
granted the plaintiff company a charter to locate its chemical works 
and carry on for fifty years the business of converting offal from 
the Chicago slaughter-houses and from dead animals into fertilizers 
in Cook county and south of the dividing line of townships 37 and 
38. They. so located their plant, and bought land which after- 
wards came within the village of Hyde Park. The people found 
their business a nuisance An ordinance of the village forbade the 
carrying of such material or products through its streets or on the 
railroads through it. The company sought to enjoin the execution 
of the ordinance. ‘The state courts refused to doso. It took the 
case to the federal Supreme Court, asserting that its charter was a 
contract and the ordinance a violation of it. 
The majority of the court held, in the first place, that there was 
no express contract providing in terms that the village of Hyde 
Park should not interfere with them, and, in the second place, that 
if there had been, it would probably be void as an unauthorized 
197 U. S., 566. 2 /d., 659. 
