Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/521

 In further explanation of the particular points of this contention, it should be noticed that at the argument appellant’s counsel was careful to limit the discussion to the one question of legislative power to enact the statute, and particularly § 11 thereof which prescribes a maximum schedule of rates for the storage, of grain in public warehouses. Counsel did not claim, in argument or otherwise, that at the time in question the appellant was not engaged in the business of storing grain for others; nor pretend that the empty space then existing in his warehouse would be needed by appellant in the prosecution of his other business of buying, selling, and shipping grain. The record is silent as to relator's ulterior purposes in seeking storage for his wheat at appellant’s elevator. Whether the storage was sought with a view to shipping the grain by rail to a market at some point within or without the state is not disclosed; nor can the court ascertain, from the record or otherwise, whether it was relator’s purpose to hold the wheat in said elevator for sale at a favorable moment in the local or foreign market; or whether he intended the grain for his individual use, as seed or otherwise, and expected to demand and receive a redelivery of the grain to himself at said grain elevator, as, under § 7 of of said chapter 126, relator would have an option to do, i. e., an option to demand a redelivery of the “kind, quality, and quantity of grain” placed in said elevator.

The foregoing explanations will suffice to develop the fact that the only question we are to determine in this case is one of legislative power, with reference to the limitations of such power existing in the constitutions of the state an’ nation, and hereinbefore referred to. The legislature, by § 4 of the statute, has declared that “all buildings, elevators, or warehouses in this state erected and operated, or which may be hereafter erected or operated, * * * for the purpose of buying, selling, storing, shipping, or handling grain for profit, are hereby declared public warehouses.” Other sections of the statute inaugurate a system of state surveillance over such public warehouses and “public warehousemen,” and among other regulations is that particularly involved here, viz., that which fixes a maximum schedule of rates or charges for the storage of grain in said