eS. 
1900.] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 043 
esting recent discussions of the police power in regard to a question 
as to which the state courts disagree. A statute of Utah forbade 
employment of workingmen for more than eight hours of the day in 
mining, smelting or refining and reduction of ores and metals. 
Holden was convicted of employing one John Anderson to work 
asa miner ten hours a day. He claimed that the law deprived him 
and his employés of liberty; that it was class legislation, and also a 
deprivation of equal protection of the lawsand of property and 
liberty without due process of law and of his privileges and immu- 
nities as a citizen of the United States. 
The Supreme Court holds the law good, Justices Brewer and 
Peckham dissenting. Justice Brown, in the opinion by the court, 
reviews the history of the fourteenth amendment and, to a great 
extent, its application by the federal Supreme Court. He divides 
the cases into: First, those where legislation is claimed to have 
discriminated unjustly against some individual or class, and so de- 
prived particular individuals of their fundamental rights, and, 
second, where the legislature has changed or abolished something 
which had been deemed essential to the administration of justice. _ 
This is preliminary to a general survey of changes in procedure 
and substantive law in this century, among which he emphasizes 
mitigation in severity of punishments, emancipation of women, 
disuse of the grand jury, simplification of the law of real property 
and of the law of civil procedure. The definition of liberty in 
Allgeyer’s case is approved as establishing a property right of con- 
tract, but Commonwealth vs. Alger is cited to the principle that 
no property right is above the police power when rightly used. 
The prohibition of lotteries and of dealing in intoxicating bever- 
ages are instanced as late developments in the use of this power in 
relation to contracts. Citations of cases and statutes as to mines 
and mining are extensively given, and he concludes that, if safety 
can be required in appliances, reasonable hours of employment in 
the interest of health and morals may also. He declines to express 
any opinion as to the constitutionality of a general eight-hour law, 
but he thinks it allowable to establish it in the employment under 
‘ consideration. Similar laws in many states are not upheld. 
In Smyth vs, Ames! we have the last determination as to rail- 
road rates. Freight rates established by the Nebraska legislature 
1769 U. S., 466 (1898). 
