to persons or property, proof of injury inflicted by the running of the locomotives or cars is made prima facie evidence of negligence. It was contended that although a classification of railway employees may be justified from general considerations based upon the hazardous character of the occupation, such classification becomes arbitrary and a denial of the equal protection of the law the moment it is found to embrace employees not exposed to hazards peculiar to railway operation. This contention was held without merit. The case in hand illustrates the fact that such employees, though not directly engaged in the management of trains, are nevertheless within the general line of hazard inherent in the railway business. The deceased was the foreman of a section crew. His business was to keep the track in repair. He stood by the side of the track to let a train pass by; a derailment occurred, and a car fell upon him and crushed out his life. The only legal effect of the presumption of liability created by the statute is to cast upon the railroad company the duty of producing some evidence to the contrary. When that is done the inference is at an end, and the question of negligence is one for the jury, upon all of the evidence. The statute does not therefore deny the equal protection of the law, because it creates a presumption of liability, since its operation is only to supply an inference of liability in the absence of other evidence contradicting such inference. If a legislative provision not unreasonable in itself, prescribing a rule of evidence, in either criminal or civil cases, does not shut out from the party affected a reasonable opportunity to submit to the jury in his defense all of the facts bearing upon the issue, there is no ground for holding that due process of law has been denied him, or the equal protection of the law. Mobile, J. & K. C. R. Co. v. Turnipseed, 219 U. S. 35.

§ 413. Requiring full train crew. The Arkansas statute excluding railroads less than 50 miles in length from the operation of the law prescribing a minimum of three

brakemen for freight trains of more than twenty-five cars, does not deny to other railroads the equal protection of the laws. The main object of the statute was to provide for the safety of passengers travelling on so-called trunk lines, connecting distant or populous parts of the country, and on which the perils of travelling are greater than on short, local lines. As suggested in argument, a road only 50 miles in length would seldom have a sleeping car attached to its trains; and passengers travelling 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. 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 railroad companies doing business in the state of the class to which it is made applicable. The state was under an obligation to establish such regulations as were necessary or reasonable for the safety of all engaged in business or domiciled within its limits. Beyond doubt, passengers on interstate carriers while within Arkansas are as fully entitled to the benefits of valid local laws enacted for the public safety as are citizens of the state Local statutes directed to such an end have their source in the power of the state, never surrendered, of caring for the public safety of all within its jurisdiction; and the validity under the Constitution of the United States of such statutes is not to be questioned in a Federal court unless they are clearly inconsistent with some power granted to the general government, or with some right secured by that instrument, or unless they are purely arbitrary in their nature. Under the evidence, there is admittedly some room for controversy as to whether the statute is or was necessary; but it cannot be said that it is so unreasonable as to justify the court in adjudging

that it is merely an arbitrary exercise of power, and not germane to the objects which evidently the state legislature had in view. It is a means employed by the state to accomplish an object which it is entitled to accomplish, and such means, even if deemed unwise, are not to be condemned or disregarded by the courts, if they have a real relation to that object. Chicago, R. I. & P. R. Co. v. Arkansas, 219 U. S. 453.

§ 414. Requiring full switching crew-Excessive penalties. The exemptions in favor of railways less than 100 miles in length, made by a state statute forbidding railway companies with yards or terminals in cities of the state to conduct switching operations across public crossings in cities of the first or second class, with a switching crew of less than one engineer, a fireman, a foreman, and three helpers, does not render the statute repugnant to the Fourtenth Amendment as denying the equal protection of the laws to a railway company coming within its provisions, although certain terminal companies which do switching for connecting trunk lines, being less than 100 miles in length, are not covered by the statute, and one of such companies may do switching over some of the same crossings that the railway company in question does. The distinction seems arbitrary if regard is had only to its letter, but there may have been considerations which determined it, and the record does not show the contrary. It is impossible for legislation to be all-comprehensive, and there may be practical groupings of objects which will as a whole fairly present a class of itself, although there may be exceptions in which the evil aimed at is deemed not so flagrant. St. Louis, I. M. & S. Ry. Co. v. Arkansas, 240 U. S. 518.

§ 415. Classification of railway employees-Railway relief. An unconstitutional discrimination is not made by amending Iowa Code, § 2071, which defined the liability of railway corporations for injuries resulting from

negligence or mismanagement in the use and operation of their railways, so that a railway company, when sued on such liability, may not raise the defense that a recovery is barred by the acceptance of benefits under a contract of membership in its relief department, although this provision of the amendatory act applies only to those employees who were embraced within the provisions of the original statute, and to the enforcement of the particular liabilities which that statute defined, and the benefits of such statute were confined to those engaged in the hazardous business of operating railroads. The limitation to a particular class of employees of railroad corporations is based upon the decisions of the state court that the benefits of the original statute were confined to those who were engaged in the hazardous business of operating railroads. This is claimed to be an invalid discrimination, and a denial of the equal protection of the laws. It was, however, entirely competent for the legislature, in enacting the prohibition, for the purpose of securing the enforcement of the liability it had defined, to limit it to those cases in which the liability arose. As the purpose of the amendment was to supplement the original statute, the classification was properly the same. With respect to subsequent transactions, the amendment must be regarded as having the same validity as it would have had if it had formed a part of the earlier enactment. No criticism on the ground of discrimination can successfully be addressed to the amendatory act which would not likewise impeach the statute in its earlier form. The propriety of the classification of the original statute has been considered and upheld by the Supreme Court. Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co. v. McGuire, 219 U. S. 549.

§ 416. Abolishing fellow servant rule. The Arkansas statute abolishing the fellow servant rule as to corporations operating railroads within the state does not deny such a corporation the equal protection of the laws because the statute does not apply to individual employers.

Whether the distinction merely between corporations and partnerships and individuals, is competent for a legislature to make, under its power of classifying objects, the Supreme Court said it was not called upon to decide. The distinction made by the statute is broader. The distinction (among others) it makes is between railroads operating in the state and individuals, and such distinction has been maintained as not offending the Constitution of the United States. Aluminum Co. v. Ramsey, 222 U. S.

251.

§ 417. Federal employers' liability act. The imposition of the liability created by the employers' liability act of April 22, 1908, upon interstate carriers by railroad only, and for the benefit of all their employees engaged in interstate commerce, although some are not subjected to the peculiar hazards incident to the operation of trains, or to hazards that differ from those to which other employees in such commerce not within the act are exposed, does not invalidate the statute under the due-process-oflaw clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, on the ground that, it makes an arbitrary and unreasonable classification, even assuming that that clause is equivalent to the provision of the Fourteenth Amendment securing the equal protection of the laws. Even if it be assumed that the due-process-of-law clause of the Fifth Amendment is equivalent to the "equal protection of the laws" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, it does not take from Congress the power to classify, nor does it condemn exertions of that power merely because they occasion some inequalities. On the contrary, it admits of the exercise of a wide discretion in classifying according to general, rather than minute distinctions, and condemns what is done only when it is without any reasonable basis, and therefore is purely arbitrary. Tested by these standards, this classification is not objectionable. Like classifications of railroad carriers and employees for like purposes, when assailed under the