Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 5.djvu/348

332 332 HARVARD LA W REVIEW. The credit of the township is invoked to procure funds for the accommodation of a single class temporarily and through unexpected calamity embarrassed in the prosecution of its ordinary business. Can this be cailed a public purpose? Clearly not. It would doubtless relieve the temporary wants of that class, would enable it to enter upon the business of the year with increased hope and a reasonable expectation of ordinary success in that business, and thus indirectly result in great benefit to the general public. But a similar result would follow the success and prosperity of any other class in business. And if the principle be once recognized in its application to this class, who can tell how soon it may be invoked in aid of another? If one hundred farmers may receive seventy-five dollars each to assist them in their farming, why may not one hundred mechanics with equal propriety re- ceive seventy-five dollars each to assist them in their business, or a single manufacturer who employs one hundred hands receive seventy- five hundred dollars to assist him in his manufacturing? A difference in amount makes no difference in the principle. The same point was decided the same way in the case of Rail- road Co. v. Smith (23 Kan. 745), where the court were called to pass upon the validity of a statute (Laws of 1873, ch. 51) authorizing Blue Rapids township to take stock in and issue bonds to the Irving Manufacturing Company, a corporation then organ- ized, whose purpose, as expressed in its charter, was to purchase all needed lands, and construct and maintain a dam across the Big Blue river, within two miles of Irving, and build and maintain mills and their machinery for manufacturing purposes. The Act was held unconstitutional. The court, through Mr. Justice Brewer, says (page 755) : Public aid to private purposes cannot be secured by yoking them to a public purpose. And where the public and private purposes are attempted to be aided by a single concession, the latter vitiate, rather than the former uphold the grant. 1 The decisions of the federal courts on this point are to the same effect. In 1873 the question came before Mr. Justice Dillon, in the Eighth Circuit, in the case of Commercial Bank v. City of Iola (2 Dill. Circ. Ct. Repts. 353). An Act of the legislature of Iowa purported to authorize the city of Iola to appropriate $50,000 to aid in the erection of buildings at or near the city of Iola, x to be used for the purpose of manufacturing bridges, 1 But see Burlington v. Beasley, 94 U. S. 310, where taxation in aid of a public grist- mill, the tolls of which the legislature would have a right to regulate, was sustained. Possibly in a new country such a mill would be a public necessity analogous to a rail- road, and impossible without public aid.