Nov. 24, 1906.] 
SUPPLEMENT TO FOREST AND STREAM. 
819 
STEAMSHIP INSPECTION, ETC. 
Covers a wide field of regulation, from the in¬ 
spection of boilers, machinery, tonnage and pas¬ 
senger capacity, to life saving apparatus, fire 
drills and speed limits. 
Regulations and penalties of this kind are pro¬ 
vided for under the police statutes of many States, 
especially in factories, mines, stationary engines, 
etc. 
U. S. INSPECTION OF DRESSED MEATS. 
Originally government inspection at the abat¬ 
toirs was to determine the sanitary qualities of 
meat products intended for foreign commerce. A 
police regulation under the commerce clause. 
The Senate last session inserted an amendment 
in the annual agricultural bill extending Federal 
inspection to cattle and hogs intended for domes¬ 
tic use, covering a rigid inspection both before 
and after killing and after packing. 
Senator Beveridge, of Indiana, the author of 
the meat inspection bill, in an interview says: 
“We are now' in a period of the moral re¬ 
generation of American business. The meat in¬ 
spection bill is a part of that general regenera¬ 
tion. Its purpose is to make certain that the 
American people shall get from our packers just 
as good meat and meat food products as the 
European people get from them. The European 
governments demand that we subject all meats 
shipped to them to careful inspection, and we 
on our part concede that that demand is just. 
That is the reason why the Federal government 
provides such careful inspection of meats sold 
abroad. But if it be conceded, as it is, that we 
ought to inspect meat sold to the people of other 
countries, we ought to inspect meats to the people 
of our own country.” 
The bill not only provides for inspection, but 
really gives the government unlimited super¬ 
vision of the packing business, as inspectors 
can and will be present from the time the cat¬ 
tle arrive at packing yards until their carcases 
are carted away in cans and otherwise. 
Such regulations are for the preservation of 
public health and nothing else, so become police 
measures of the highest order. 
PURE FOOD AND DRUG BILL. 
Any one who can read this bill without 
realizing that it is a police measure from top 
to bottom, lacks, it seems to me, the capacity to tell 
daylight from darkness. It has two purposes: 
(1) the protection of public health, and (2) the 
enforcement of a proper code of business morality 
in the production, manufacture and sale of pure 
foods and drugs in the country at large. Similar 
laws are in operation in most of our States; and 
the legality of the restrictive regulations and pen¬ 
alties prescribed, have, without variation, been 
sustained by the State and Federal courts as proper 
and necessary police statutes in the preserva¬ 
tion of public health, and the control of harm¬ 
ful business methods. Excepting minor dif¬ 
ferences relating to the practicability or justice 
of certain provisions in the bill, the only op¬ 
position in Congress has come from those who 
contend that such Federal regulation of impure 
food and drugs constitutes an invasion of the 
police powers reserved to the States. Out of a 
total membership in Congress of 478, hardly a 
dozen votes were cast against the bill. The 
Sherman anti-trust act primarily affects great 
organizations of capital unjustly restricting the 
freedom of commercial competition, while the 
food and drug bill covers an infinitely greater 
range of business dealings; the police regula¬ 
tions thereunder will require the employment 
of a skilled detective corps far exceeding in 
number any now performing similar duties in 
the other bureaus of our government. 
The legality of this health and business morality 
bill is made an argument to^ rest upon the com¬ 
merce clause. 
NATIONAL INTERSTATE QUARANTINE BILL. 
This bill has become a law. It ‘s the un¬ 
questioned forerunner of acts conferring coni- 
nlete Federal jurisdiction upon all public 
health maters of National concern. It involves 
the two great questions of Federal and St^te 
police power, and its future enforcement will 
show, in the simplest manner, the entire prac¬ 
ticability of such pow'ers existing (1) inde¬ 
pendently, and (2) in co-operation for the 
preservation of public health. Like most of 
its predecessors relating to public health, the 
jurisdiction of this act. is incorrectly made to-rest 
upon the commerce clause. Death and disease 
are to be conquered by the Federal authorities, 
because Section 7 of said bill relates to the car¬ 
riage of freight and passengers in transitu. 
Nine-tenths of the regulations relate to public 
health; one-tenth to the entirely proper adjust¬ 
ment of this Federal health law to traffic inter¬ 
ests. The bill is for the control and suppres¬ 
sion of yellow fever—an epidemic disease im¬ 
periling the Nation’s health—and invests the 
Federal government with supreme authority 
thereunder when the occasion arises. If legal 
in one kind of contagious disease, it must be so 
as to all other infectious and communicable 
diseases; hence it is the beginning of Federal 
legislation that will eventually include many 
forms of police regulation necessary for the 
protection of our public health—from the pol¬ 
lution of our interstate public waters to the 
control of all “migratory” diseases, which, 
from their nature, are necessarily beyond the 
scope and control of the State. 
THE DEBS CASE. 
The attitude of the Federal courts in the liti¬ 
gation growing out of the great Pullman strike 
in 1894, evidenced most strongly the existence, 
in the Federal government, of a sovereign, far- 
reaching police power. The fact that ecpiity 
jurisdiction was extended to reach an alleged 
criminal conspiracy is of little importance to 
the laity, or the fact that such jurisdiction at¬ 
tached under the commerce clause and that 
relating to the transmission of mail. The gen¬ 
eral principles laid down by the court, and 
especially its aplication, are worthy of men¬ 
tion. While the right of the National govern¬ 
ment to prevent any substantial interference 
with interstate commerce or with the free car¬ 
riage of mail, under its police power, should be 
conceded, the court went further than this by 
declaring, in effect, the existence of a sovereign 
power capable of protecting a community from 
the disastrous consequences of mob rule at a 
time when the local authorities, through con¬ 
nivance or indifference, failed to assert the 
criminal laws of the State in checking a riotous 
demonstration affecting all those within the 
natural protection of the local laws. 
In summing up the court says: 
“We hold that the Government of the United States 
is one having jurisdiction over every foot of soil within 
its territory, and acting directly upon each citizen; that 
while it is a government of enumerated powers, it has 
within the limits of those powers all the attributes of 
sovereignty.” 
ANTI-PASS LEGISLATION. 
Within the States, laws have been generally 
enacted, prohibiting the issuing of passes by 
common carriers to persons in official positions 
who might be improperly influenced thereby, or, 
possibly, discredited before the country in the 
discharge of their public duties. So important 
a moral question has this become that some of 
the State constitutions contain this prohibition. 
Such acts are police regulations of the plainest 
sort. In the Railway Rate bill a similar pro¬ 
hibition has been included—but as, of old, it is 
solemnly treated as a regulation of commerce. 
If Congress has no police power sufficient to 
warrant the passage of such an act in separate 
form as a regulation of public morals, it is in¬ 
conceivable how such a provision becomes a legal 
one because embodied in a rate bill. 
PUBLICITY AND CORRUPT PRACTICE ACTS. 
In various forms of late the States have be¬ 
gun to regulate political contributions by corpo¬ 
rations and the reckless and corrupt use of 
money by candidates and parties in political 
contests. Such laws are police regulations, of 
course. The several bills of similar import, now 
pending in Congress, involve only matters of 
political morality and must stand or fall upon 
the existence of a National police power. 
FEDERAL EIGHT HOUR LAWS. 
Legislative limitations put upon the hours of 
labor have become a well recognized police 
regulation within the States for the betterment 
of social conditions, or in the preservation of 
the health of employees in certain pursuits. 
Congress has already limited the hours of labor 
within all its great departments, and has now be¬ 
fore it several bills directly affecting certain em¬ 
ployees of common carriers engaged in inter¬ 
state commerce; and also one applying to 
private contractors doing work for the govern¬ 
ment. All such restraints and penalties are, as 
in the case of a State, purely police regulations 
without, however, any express authority in the 
Constitution, other than exists in the exercise 
of the government’s sovereign powers. 
PROHIBITORY PRACTICE ACT. 
The law passed by Congress, denying the right 
of a Senator or Representative to receive com¬ 
pensation for professional services rendered be¬ 
fore any department in which the government may 
be interested, was enacted with a view of relieving 
the various subordinate officials of the depart¬ 
ments from influences derogatory to the good 
of the service. It made a crime out of official 
pressure and rendered such a person violating 
the act liable to fine and imprisonment, and 
hereafter incapable of holding any office under 
the government. The recent cases of Senators 
Mitchell and Burton are familiar to the public. 
That this law is a police regulation, is too ap¬ 
parent for argument, the only purpose being to 
shield the government departments from an im¬ 
proper pressure and against possible reprisals, 
by officials, in a position to possibly resent any 
failure to grant their requests. Nor can this law 
be treated as a mere government regulation of 
Federal office-holders, for the court expressly 
held that Senators “do not hold their places 
under the government of the United States,” 
and are therefore to be regarded as the repre¬ 
sentative of a State and not of the general gov¬ 
ernment. When this distinction is kept in mind 
the effect of such restrictions will be more fully 
appreciated. 
INDIAN LIQUOR PROHIBITION LAWS. 
Congress recognizing the tendency of the red 
brother to look on the wine when it is red or 
any other color, passed a series of acts pro¬ 
hibiting, under the commerce clause, the sale 
of liquor to them in the States and Territories 
and has also put in a general prohibition clause 
in the Statehood bill, providing for the ad¬ 
mission of Indian Territory into the Union. 
The Anti-Canteen Act is also one withdrawing 
certain privileges from the soldiers. These 
statutes are regulatory of public morals. 
FEDERAL RAILWAY LEGISLATION. 
With few exceptions the acts of Congress 
regulating common carriers are police statutes 
of the most apparent nature. 
The rate bill just passed is the best example 
we have of the extensive effect of the com¬ 
merce clause upon a single branch of private 
business. Under existing regulations and those 
proposed in the Tillman-Hepburn bill, the 
Federal government has exercised and proposes 
to exercise a practically unlimited dominion 
over intersate carriers. Many of these pro¬ 
visions are proper regulations of commerce, 
both as police measures and otherwise, while 
others far transcend, it seems to me, the meaning 
that should be given by Congress to the clause 
regulating commerce between the States, and, 
moreover, put the government in the position 
of exercising all the regulatory powers of an 
incorporator without any of the responsibility 
that should rest upon a creator of such enter¬ 
prises. The right to so regulate it seems to me 
must necessarily involve the right to incorporate 
—and the sooner we have Federal laws for the 
creation and control of interstate carriers, the 
sooner we will escape from the confusion of con¬ 
flicting State and National statutes. 
POLICE POWER OF POST-OFFICE DEPARTMENT. 
From the inception of the postal service the 
