deprive the owner of his liberty and property, without due process of law. The power which the States have of prohibiting such use by individuals of their property as will be prejudicial to the health, the morals, or the safety of the public, is not-and, consistently with the existence and safety of organized society, cannot be― burdened with the condition that the State must compensate such individual owners for pecuniary losses they may sustain, by reason of their not being permitted, by a noxious use of their property, to inflict injury upon the community. The exercise of the police power by the destruction of property which is itself a public nuisance, or the prohibition of its use in a particular way, whereby its value becomes depreciated, is very different from taking property for public use, or from depriving a person of his property without due process of law. In the one case, a nuisance only is abated; in the other, unoffending property is taken away from an innocent owner. It is true, that, when the defendants in these cases purchased or erected their breweries, the laws of the State did not forbid the manufacture of intoxicating liquors. But the State did not thereby give any assurance, or come under an obligation, that its legislation upon that subject would remain unchanged. Indeed, as was said in Stone v. Mississippi, 101 U. S. 814, the supervision of the public health and the public morals is a governmental power, "continuing in its nature," and "to be dealt with as the special exigencies of the moment may require;" and that, "for this purpose, the largest legislative discretion is allowed, and the discretion cannot be parted with any more than the power itself." So in Beer Co. v. Massachusetts, 97 U. S. 32: "If the public safety or the public morals. require the discontinuance of any manufacture or traffic, the hand of the legislature cannot be stayed from providing for its discontinuance by any incidental inconvenience which individuals or corporations may suffer." Judgment affirmed. MUNN v. ILLINOIS. 94 U. S., 113. 1876. An Illinois statute provided that any person operating warehouses and elevators wherein grain or other property is stored within any city of more than one hundred thousand population should procure a license from the County court permitting him to transact business. as a public warehouseman, and provided for a maximum charge for the storage and handling of grain received into such warehouse or elevator. Munn was convicted of operating a grain elevator and warehouse within the city of Chicago without a license. He was fined in accordance with the provisions of the statute and appealed to the Supreme Court of Illinois, which court affirmed the judgment below. He then sued out a writ of error to the United States Supreme Court, his contention being that the Illinois statute was repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which provides that no State shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE delivered the opinion of the court. When one becomes a member of society, he necessarily parts with some rights or privileges which, as an individual not affected by his relations to others, he might retain. "A body politic," as aptly defined in the preamble of the constitution of Massachusetts, "is a social compact by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good." This does not confer power upon the whole people to control rights which are purely and exclusively private (Thorpe v. R. & B. Railroad Co., 27 Vt. 143); but it does authorize the establishment of laws requiring each citizen to so conduct himself, and so use his own property, as not unnecessarily to injure another. This is the very essence of government, and has found expression in the maxim sic 'utere tuo ut alienum non laedas. From this source come the police powers, which, as was said by Mr. Chief Justice Taney in the License Cases, 5 How. 583, "are nothing more or less than the powers of government inherent in every sovereignty, that is to say, the power to govern men and things." Under these powers the government regulates the conduct of its citizens one towards another, and the manner in which each shall use his own property, when such regulation becomes necessary for the public good. In their exercise it has been customary in England from time immemorial, and in this country from its first colonization, to regulate ferries, common carriers, hackmen, bakers, millers, wharfingers, innkeepers, etc., and in so doing to fix a maximum of charge to be made for services rendered, accommodations furnished, and articles sold. To this day, statutes are to be found in many of the States upon some or all these subjects; and we think it has never yet been successfully contended that such legislation came within any of the constitutional prohibitions against interference with private property. With the Fifth Amendment in force, Congress, in 1820, conferred power upon the city of Washington "to regulate . . . the rates of wharfage at private wharves, . . . the sweeping of chimneys, and to fix the rates of fees therefor, . . . and the weight and quality of bread" (3 Stat. 587, sect. 7); and, in 1848, "to make all necessary regulations respecting hackney carriages and the rates of fare of the same, and the rates of hauling by cartmen, wagoners, carmen, and draymen, and the rates of commission of auctioneers" (9 Stat. 224, sect. 2). From this it is apparent that, down to the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, it was not supposed that statutes regulating the use, or even the price of the use, of private property necessarily deprived an owner of his property without due process of law. Under some circumstances they may, but not under all. The amendment does not change the law in this particular; it simply prevents the States from doing that which will operate as such a deprivation. * * * * It matters not in this case that these plaintiffs in error had built their warehouses and established their business before the regulations complained of were adopted. What they did was from the beginning subject to the power of the body politic to require them to conform to such regulations as might be established by the proper authorities for the common good. They entered upon their business and provided themselves with the means to carry it on subject to this condition. If they did not wish to submit themselves to such interference, they should not have clothed the public with an interest in their concerns. The same principle applies to them that does to the proprietor of a hackney-carriage, and as to him it has never been supposed that he was exempt from regulating statutes or ordinances because he had purchased his horses and carriage and established his business before the statute or the ordinance was adopted. It is insisted, however, that the owner of property is entitled to a reasonable compensation for its use, even though it be clothed with a public interest, and that what is reasonable is a judicial and not a legislative question. As has already been shown, the practice has been otherwise. In countries where the common law prevails, it has been customary from time immemorial for the legislature to declare what shall be a reasonable compensation under such circumstances, or, perhaps more properly speaking, to fix a maximum beyond which any charge made would be unreasonable. Undoubtedly, in mere private contracts, relating to matters in which the public has no interest, what is reasonable must be ascertained judicially. But this is because the legislature has no control over such a contract. So, too, in matters which do affect the public interest, and as to which legislative control may be exercised, if there are no statutory regulations upon the subject, the courts must determine what is reasonable. The controlling fact is the power to regulate at all. If that exists, the right to establish the maximum of charge, as one of the means of regulation, is implied. In fact, the common-law rule, which requires the charge to be reasonable, is itself a regulation as to price. Without it the owner could make his rates at will, and compel the public to yield to his terms, or forego the use. * * * * After what has already been said, it is unnecessary to refer at length to the effect of the other provision of the Fourteenth Amendment which is relied upon, viz., that no State shall "deny to any person with its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Certainly, it cannot be claimed that this prevents the State from regulating the fares of hackmen or the charges of draymen in Chicago, unless it does the same thing in every other place within its jurisdiction. But, as has been seen, the power to regulate the business of warehouses depends upon the same principle as the power to regulate hackmen and draymen, and what cannot be done in the one case in this particular cannot be done in the other. Judgment affirmed. GERMAN ALLIANCE INSURANCE COMPANY v. IKE LEWIS. 233 U. S. 389. Decided April 20th, 1914. The State of Kansas in 1909 passed a law, which requires every Fire Insurance Company, except domestic Farmers' Mutual Insurance Companies, to file with the Superintendent of Insurance schedules showing rates of all risks insurable by such company in the State and all the conditions which affect the rates or the value of the insurance to the insured, and gives the Superintendent of Insurance the power to determine any rate excessive or unreasonably high or not adequate to the safety or soundness of the company, in which case, and on his authority, to direct the company to publish and file a higher or lower rate, which shall be commensurate with the character of the risk; but in every case the rate shall be reasonable. The plaintiff brought a Bill in Equity against the said Superintendent of Insurance to restrain him from enforcing the provisions of this law on the ground that the law was an unconstitutional exercise of the police power of the State and contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. MR. JUSTICE MCKENNA delivered the opinion of the court. The specific error complained of is the refusal of the district court to hold that the act of the State of Kansas is unconstitutional and void as offending the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. To support this charge of error, complainant asserts that the business of fire insurance is a private business, and, therefore, there is no constitutional power in a State to fix the rates and charges for services rendered by it. An exercise of such right, it is contended, is a taking of private property for a public use. The contention is made in various ways, and, excluding possible countervailing contentions, it is urged that the act under review cannot be justified as an exercise of the police power or of the power of the State to admit foreign corporations within its borders upon such terms as it may prescribe, or of any other power possessed by the State; that no State has the power to impose unconstitutional burdens either upon private citizens or private corporations engaged in a private business. The basic contention is that the business of insurance is a natural right, receiving no privilege from the State, is voluntarily entered into, cannot be compelled, nor can any of its exercises be compelled; that it concerns personal contracts of indemnity against certain contingencies merely. Whether such contracts shall be made at all, it is contended, is a matter of private negotiation and agreement, and necessarily there must be freedom in fixing their terms. And "where the right to demand and receive service does not exist in the public, the correlative right of regulation as to rates and charges does not exist." Many elements, it is urged, determine the extending or rejection of insurance; the hazards are relative and depend upon many circumstances upon which there may be different judgments, and there are personal considerations as well-"moral hazards," as they are called. * We may put aside, therefore, all merely adventitious considerations and come to the bare and essential one, whether a contract of fire insurance is private, and as such has constitutional immunity from regulation. Or, to state it differently and to express an antithetical proposition, is the business of insurance so far affected with a public interest as to justify legislative regulation of its rates? And we mean a broad and definite public interest. In some degree the public interest is concerned in every transaction between men, ⚫ the sum of the transactions constituting the activities of life. But there is something more special than this, something of more definite consequence, which makes the public interest that justifies regulatory legislation. We can best explain by examples. The transportation of property-business of common carriers-is obviously of public concern, and its regulation is an accepted governmental power. The transmission of intelligence is of cognate character. There are other utilities which are denominated public, such as the furnishing of water and light, including in the latter gas and electricity. We do not hesitate at their regulation nor of the fixing of the prices which may be charged for their service. The basis of the ready concession of the power of regulation is the public interest. This is not denied, but its application to insurance is so far denied as not to extend to the fixing of rates. It is said, the State has no power to fix the rates charged to the public by either corporations or individuals engaged in a private business, and the "test of whether the use is public or not is whether a public trust is imposed upon the property, and whether the public has a legal right to the use which cannot be denied;" or, as we have said, quoting counsel, "Where the right to demand and receive service does not exist in the public, the correlative right of regulation as to rates and charges does not exist." Cases are cited which, it must be admitted, support the contention. The distinction is artificial. It is, indeed, but the assertion that the cited examples embrace all cases of public interest. The complainant explicitly so contends, urging that the test it applies excludes the idea that there can be a public interest which gives the power of regulation as distinct from a public use, which, necessarily, it is contended, can only apply to property, not to personal contracts. The distinction, we think, has no basis in principle, |