§ 491. Regulating innkeeper's duty in case of fire. The Nebraska statute singling out hotels having more than fifty rooms as proper subjects for regulations respecting the duty of hotel keepers towards guests and inmates in case of fire, and not applying to keepers of hotels having a less number of rooms, does not discriminate against the former and is not repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment as denying the equal protection of the laws. See the cases cited. Miller v. Strahl, 239 U. S. 426.

§ 492. Forbidding brickmaking in designated area. Prohibiting by municipal ordinance the manufacture of brick within a designated area cannot be said to deny the equal protection of the laws to the owner of a brickyard within the prohibited district, where the record does not show that brickyards in other localities within the municipality where the same conditions exist are not regulated or prohibited, or that other objectionable businesses are permitted within the same district. The petitioner makes his attack upon the law depend upon disputable considerations of classification and upon a comparison of conditions of which there is no means of judicial determination, and upon which, nevertheless, the court was asked to reverse legislative action exercised upon matters of which the city has control. There is no allegation or proof of other objectionable businesses being permitted within the district, and a speculation of their establishment or conduct at some future time is too remote. It may be that brickyards in other localities within the city where the same conditions exist are not regulated or prohibited, but it does not follow that they will not be. That petitioner's business was the first in time to be prohibited does not make its prohibition unlawful. Mr. Justice McKenna in delivering the opinion of the court said: "It may be that something else than prohibition may have satisfied the conditions. Of this, however, we have no means of determining, and besides, we cannot declare invalid the exertion of a power which the city undoubtedly has because of

a charge that it does not exactly accommodate the conditions, or that some other exercise would have been better or less harsh. We must accord good faith to the city in the absence of a clear showing to the contrary and an honest exercise of judgment upon the circumstances which induced its action." Hadacheck v. Sebastian, 239 U. S. 394.

§ 493. Workmen's compensation act. The equal protection of the laws is not denied by construing the Washington workmen's compensation act (Wash. Laws 1911, chap. 74), as taking away any existing right, under Remington & Ballinger's Code, §§ 183, 194, to maintain an action for the wrongful act of an employee, not only as against the employer, but as against any third person by whose negligence the death may have been caused, where the employee sustained the fatal injury while engaged about his ordinary duties at his employer's plant. Northern Pacific Railway Company v. Meese, 239 U. S. 614.

§ 494. Abating smoke nuisance. So far as the Federal Constitution is concerned, a state may, by itself or through authorized municipalities, declare the emission of dense smoke in cities or populous neighborhoods to be a nuisance and subject to restraint as such, and the harshness of such legislation or its effect upon business interests, short of a merely arbitrary enactment, are not valid constitutional objections, nor is there any valid Federal constitutional objection in the fact that the regulation may require the discontinuance of the use of property, or subject the occupant to large expenses in complying with the terms of the law or ordinance. The ordinance is not open to attack because of arbitrary classification. It applies equally to all coming within its terms, and the fact that other businesses might have been included does not make such arbitrary classification as annuls the legislation. Nor does it make classification illegal because certain cities are included and others omitted in the statute. Northwestern Laundry v. Des Moines, 239 U. S. 486.

§ 495. Regulating net weight of packages of lard. Singling out lard from other food products, as is done by the prohibition of North Dakota Laws 1911, page 355, against the sale of lard otherwise than in bulk unless put up in 1, 3 or 5-pound packages, net weight, or some multiple of these numbers, does not make the statute repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment as denying the equal protection of the laws. Plaintiff in error claims that the law "arbitrarily and without reasonable ground therefor singles out lard from all food products" which are sold in packages, such as "prints of butter, packages of coffee, boxes of crackers, and the endless number of other products sold in package form are not included, and no natural and reasonable ground for excluding them and in singling out lard has been suggested." The range of discretion that a state possesses in classifying objects of legislation has been fully discussed. The power may be determined by degrees of evil, or exercised in cases where detriment is specially experienced. The law of Dakota does not exceed this power. Armour & Co. v. North Dakota, 240 U. S. 510.

§ 496. Classification denying equal protection of the laws, because arbitrary and creating presumption of guilt. Defining the business of sugar refining as that of "any concern that buys and refines raw or other sugar exclusively, or that refines raw or other sugar from sugar taken in toll, or that buys or refines more raw or other sugar than the aggregate of the sugar produced by it from cane grown and purchased by it," as is done by § 15 of Louisiana Acts 1915, No. 10, which subjects to drastic regulation the business of sugar refining, renders the statute repugnant to the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as producing a classification which, if it does not confine itself to one particular concern, is at least arbitrary beyond possible justice.

A state cannot, consistently with the equal protection of the laws clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, create,

as is attempted by Louisiana Acts 1915, No. 10, a presumption of participation in a forbidden monopoly or combination from the systematic payment in Louisiana by a person engaged in sugar refining within the state of a less price for sugar than he pays in any other state, nor a presumption that the closing or keeping idle of a sugar refinery for more than one year was for the purpose of violating that statute or the laws against monopolies.

The statute bristles with severities that touch the plaintiff alone, and raises many questions that would have to be answered before it could be sustained. It is a classification which, if it does not confine itself to the plaintiff, at least is arbitrary beyond possible justice, and creates presumptions and special powers against it that can have no foundation except the intent to destroy. As to the classification, if a powerful rival of the plaintiff should do no refining within the state, it might systematically pay a less price for sugar in Louisiana than it paid elsewhere with none of the consequences attached to doing so in the plaintiff's case. So of any one who purchases but does not refine. So of any concern that does not buy and refine more sugar "than the aggregate of the sugar produced by it from cane grown and purchased by it," as easily might happen with a combination of planters. The legislature may go a good way in raising presumptions or in changing the burden of proof, but there are limits. The presumption created here has no relation in experience to general facts. It has no foundation except with tacit reference to the plaintiff. But it is not within the province of a legislature to declare an individual guilty or presumptively guilty of a crime. McFarland v. American Sugar Refining Co., 241 U. S. 79.

CHAPTER XXII

THE POLICE POWER

§ 497. Police power of state-Public laundries and washhouses. The equal protection of the laws clause was not intended to limit nor does it limit the police power of the state. The state has the right to legislate for the health and general welfare of the people, and such legislation will be upheld unless arbitrary and unreasonable. No general definition of the police power has been attempted by the Supreme Court, each case being decided on its own state of facts, but the power of the state over the health, welfare, safety and general good of its citizens finds no restriction in the Fourteenth Amendment. The ordinance of the city and county of San Francisco, prohibiting the carrying on of public laundries and wash houses within certain prescribed limits of the city and county, from ten o'clock at night until six o'clock in the morning, is purely a police regulation, within the competency of any municipality, possessed of the ordinary powers, to make. A federal tribunal cannot supervise such regulations; any correction of the action of municipal bodies in such matters can come only from state legislation or state tribunals. The Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution is not designed to interfere with the power of the state, sometimes termed its "police power," to prescribe regulations to promote the health, peace, morals, education and good order of the people. It may be a necessary measure of precaution in a city composed largely of wooden buildings like San, Francisco, that occupations, in which fires are constantly required, should cease after certain hours at night until the following morning; and of the necessity of such regu