porations are subject to legislative control in all respects necessary to protect the public against danger, injustice, and oppression; that the state has the power to exercise this control through boards of commissioners; that there is no unjust discrimination and no denial of the equal protection of the laws in regulations applicable to all railroad corporations alike. New York & N. E. R. Co. v. Town of Bristol, 151 U. S. 556.

§ 393. Remedy for property injured by construction of a railroad. A judgment of a state court construing a provision of the constitution of the state which gives a remedy for property injured by the construction of a to the individual, forbids legislation, in whatever form it railroad, as not extending the remedy to embrace property injured by the lawful operation of the railroad does not deprive the plaintiff of property without due process of law, or deny him the equal protection of the law. The contention that plaintiff in error was denied the equal protection of the laws is based on the allegation that those suitors whose property abutted on Filbert street where the elevated road actually occupies the territory of the street, were allowed by the state courts to recover damages for the injury thus occasioned to their property, while the plaintiff, and those in like case, whose property abutted on Filbert street where it was not occupied by the railroad structure, which was erected on the opposite side of the street on land belonging to the railroad company, were not permitted to recover. The diversity of result in the two classes of cases is supposed to show that equal protection of the laws was not afforded to the unsuccessful litigants. It appears that one Duncan, whose property abutted on Filbert street, where that street was occupied by the elevated railroad in question, was permitted by the state courts to recover for damages suffered by having been deprived of access to and free use of Filbert street. The Supreme Court was unable to see any merit in the contention that the Supreme Court of the state, in

distinguishing between the case of those who, like Duncan, were shut off from access to and use of the street by the construction thereon of the elevated railroad, and the case of those who suffered, not from the construction of the railroad on the street on which their property abutted, but from the injuries consequential on the operation of the railroad, as situated on defendant's own property, thereby deprived the plaintiff of the equal protection of the laws. The two classes of complainants differed in the critical particular that one class suffered direct and immediate damage from the construction of the railroad in such a way as to exclude them from the use of their accustomed highway, and the other class suffered damages which were consequential on the use by the defendant company of its own property. The question thus raised is within the case of Bowman v. Lewis, 101 U. S. 22. Also citing Hayes v. Missouri, 120 U. S. 68, and Barbier v. Connolly, 113 U. S. 27. It does not appear that plaintiff in error has been denied the equal protection of the laws. Marchant v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 153 U. S. 380.

§ 394. Unjust and unreasonable railroad rates. The fixing and enforcement by a railroad commission of unjust and unreasonable rates for transportation by railroad companies is an unconstitutional denial of the equal protection of the laws. The equal protection of the laws which, by the Fourteenth Amendment, no state can deny may be enacted, by which the property of one individual is without compensation wrested from him for the benefit of another, or of the public. This, as has been often observed, is a government of law, and not a government of men, and it must never be forgotten that under such a government, with its constitutional limitations and guarantees, the forms of law and the machinery of government, with all their reach and power, must in their actual workings stop on the hither side of the unnecessary and uncompensated taking or destruction of any private

property, legally acquired and legally held. Reagan v. Farmers Loan & Trust Co., 154 U. S. 362.

§ 395. Kansas law as to liability of railroads for personal injuries. The statute of Kansas making every railroad company in the state liable for damages to its employees from the negligence of its agents or of co-employees, does not discriminate against a railroad corporation irrespective of the character of the employment, in contravention of the Fourteenth Amendment, when applied to a person injured while he was engaged in loading timbers on a car for transportation over such railroad, although his general employment on the road was that of a bridge carpenter. A carpenter, employed by a railroad company, engaged at the time of the accident causing the injury to him, in loading timbers on a car for transportation on the railroad, is an employee, within the Kansas statute making railroads liable for damages done to employees in consequence of the negligence of other employees. The validity of this statute was sustained in Missouri Pacific R. Co. v. Mackey, 127 U. S. 205, in which the court held, in answer to the contention that such a law was within the prohibition of the Fourteenth Amendment, that legislation which was special in its character was not necessarily within the constitutional inhibition, if the same rule was applied under the same circumstances and conditions; that the hazardous character of the business of operating a railroad seemed to call for special legislation with respect to railroad corporations, having for its object the protection of their employees as well as the safety of the public; that the business of other corporations was not subject. to similar dangers to their employees, and that such legislation could not be objected to on the ground of making an unjust discrimination since it met a particular necessity and all railroad corporations were, without distinction, made subject to the same liabilities. The state Supreme Court found upon the facts that, although the

plaintiff's general employment was that of a bridge carpenter, he was engaged at the time the accident occurred, not in building a bridge but in loading timbers on a car for transportation over the line of defendant's road. The Court said: "The mere fact that the plaintiff's regular employment was as a bridge carpenter does not affect the case, nor does it matter that the road was newly constructed, or whether it was in regular operation or not. The injury happened to the plaintiff while he was engaged in labor directly connected with the operation of the road, and the statute applies." The Supreme Court of the United States concurred in this view. Chicago, K. & W. R. Co. v. Pontius, 157 U. S. 209.

§ 396. Statute requiring heating of railroad cars by stoves. The exclusion of railroads less than 50 miles in length from the operation of a state law prohibiting stoves or furnaces inside of or suspended from passenger cars, on other than mixed trains, does not deny to other railroads the equal protection of the laws. No doubt the main object of the statute was to provide for the safety of passengers traveling on what are commonly called trunk or through lines, connecting distant or populous parts of the country, and on which the perils incident to traveling are greater than on short, local lines. A road only 50 miles in length would seldom have a sleeping car attached to its trains; and passengers traveling on roads of that kind do not have the apprehension ordinarily felt by passengers on trains regularly carrying sleeping cars or having many passenger coaches, on account of the burning of cars in case of their derailment or in case of collision. In any event, there is no such discrimination against companies having more than 50 miles of road as to justify the contention that there has been a denial to the companies named in the act of the equal protection of the laws. The statute is uniform in its operation upon all companies doing business in the state of the class to which it is made applicable. New York, N. H. & H. R. Co. v. State of New York, 165 U. S. 628.

§ 397. Damages for running railroad across street. It was contended that a railroad company was denied the equal protection of the laws in that by the final judgment individual property owners were awarded, as compensation for contiguous property appropriated to the public use by the same proceeding, the value of their land taken, while only nominal compensation was given to the company-the value of the land, simply as land, across which the street was opened, not being taken into account. The contention is without merit. Compensation was awarded to individual owners upon the basis of the value of the property actually taken, having regard to the uses for which it was best adapted and the purposes for which it was held and used and was likely always to be used. Compensation was awarded to the railroad company upon the basis of the thing actually appropriated by the public-the use of the company's right of way for a street crossing, having regard to the purposes for which the land in question was acquired and held and was always likely to be held. In the case of individual owners, they were deprived of the entire use and enjoyment of their property, while the railroad company was left in the possession and use of its property for the purposes for which it was being used and for which it was best adapted, subject only to the right of the public to have a street across it. In this there was no denial of the equal protection of the laws, unless it be that the public cannot have a street across the tracks of a railroad company, except upon the condition precedent that it shall condemn and acquire the absolute ownership of the land, leaving untouched the right of the company to cross it with its tracks. The equal protection of the laws does not impose such a burden upon the people of a city within the limits. of which a railroad company has been permitted to lay its tracks. Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co. v. Chicago, 166 U. S. 226.

§ 398. State law establishing railroad rates-When void. A railroad corporation is a person within the