Page:Henry Osborn Taylor, A Treatise on the Law of Private Corporations (5th ed, 1905).djvu/493

 CHAP. VIII. J CORPORATION AND STATE. [§ 476. business in which the public is held to have an interest to this extent, that the milk supplied shall be pure and wholesome. 1 In truth, the interests of a societ} 7, be they called public or private, are so correlated and interwoven that it is impossible to pick out the life or occupation of any individual and say : that is an occupation in which the public has no conceivable interest. 2 Whatever the public welfare calls for, the police power of the state exists to afford, and whether any given exercise of this power is a proper one, is a question for the discretion of the legislature, subject to review in some w T ay by the courts. 3 1 See Commonwealth v. Evaus, 132 Mass. 11. 2 The business of supplying gas is one in which the public is interested. Gibbs v. Baltimore Gas Co., 130 U. S. 396. " The sovereign police power which the state possesses is to be exercised only for the general public welfare, but it reaches to every person, to every kind of busi- ness, to every species of property within the Commonwealth." People u. Salem, 20 Mich. 452, 478, per Cooley, J. See Mugler o. Kansas. 123 U. S. 623, 660; Cin., B. & Q. R. K. v. Chicago, 166 U. S. 226. 3 " As a general proposition it may be stated, it is the province of the law-making power to determine when the exigency exists, calling into exercise this (police) power. What are the subjects of its exercise, is clearly a judicial question. 11 Lake View v. Rose Hill Cemetery Co., 70 111. 191, 195, opinion of court per Scott, J. See, also, Toledo, W. and N. R'y Co. v. City of Jacksonville, 67 111. 37; Jamieson v. Indiana Nat. Gas Co., 128 Ind. 555. A few more deci- sions on the exercise of the police power are given in this note. If the public safety or the public moi'als require the discontinuance of any manufacture or traffic, the legis- lature cannot be stayed from provid- ing for its discontinuance by any incidental inconvenience which in- dividuals or corporations may suffer. All rights are held subject to the police power of the state. The court said, that they did not mean to hold that property actually in existence, in which the right of the owner had become vested, could be taken for the public good without just com- pensation; but that they did hold, in accordance with Bartemeyer v. Iowa, 18 Wall. 129, that as a measure of public regulation, a state law pro- hibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors is not repugnant to the constitution (the charter of the corporation in this case was sub- ject to alteration and repeal). Beer Co. v. Massachusetts, 97 U. S. 25. See also Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U. S. 623; Kidd v. Pearson, 128 U. S. 1. The appropriate regulation of the use of property is not a " taking 1 ' of property within the meaning of the Federal constitution. Railroad Co. o. Richmond, 96 U. S. 521. The charter of a fertilizing company, or- ganized to make dead animals into manure, is a sufficient license until revoked. But it cannot be regarded as a contract guarantying exemption from the exercise of the police power of the state, however serious the nuisance may become by reason of 473