cent members of the families of the parties than to secure redress to the persons injured. The power to bring such actions would furnish wives with the means of inflicting untold misery upon others, with little hope of redress for themselves." This seems to us little short of puerile.
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interest of society to reduce this evil as much as possible. The establishment and maintenance of inebriate asylums can, therefore, be lawfully undertaken by the State.'" This is well, but it would seem better to suppress the sale of intoxicants than to try to mend up the sufferers; better to stamp out the origins of the dis ease than to endeavor to cure the patient.
"The Gold Cure."' — Are the courts growing Accident — Voluntary Exposure to Danger. more tender of drunken adults than of sober infants? — The most impudent class of persons in the com It would seem so from Mayor v. Keeley Institute, Maryland, 27 L. K. A. 646, which holds that a munity are insurers against accident, and the most statute authorizing any habitual drunkard to be sent bare-faced and impudent contention they ever made for treatment and cure to an institution within the in the courts is to be found in Hess v. Van Auken, State maintained for such persons, at the expense of New York Common Pleas, in a late number of the the county or city of his residence, if neither he nor Miscellaneous Reports. A cashier of a bank went to a saw-mill to get his petitioning kin is financially able to incur the ex some boards cut of a certain length for the bank. pense, does not make an unconstitutional use of He stayed during the cutting, and slipping on a con money raised by taxation. Here is paternalism for cealed block on the floor, fell against a circular saw you. Truly " the devil lays pillows for drunken and his hand was cut off at the wrist. The insurers men to fall on." The court observe : — contended that he had " voluntarily exposed" him "If the legislature has authority, which we do not ques self to the danger, but the court could not see it. tion, to treat habitual drunkards as a class of citizens who Judge Bookstaver observed that the respondent's are entitled to be restrained or medically cared for by "contention seemed to be that the plaintiff walked placing them in institutions for treatment, it would natu into the mill and cut off his hand." The respondent rally follow that in so far as the law applies to the citizens of Baltimore, the expense of the treatment of its ha'itual also had the impudence to request the trial judge drunkards ought reasonably to be borne by it. It was held, to charge that he was "operating the saw" when as already stated in the Regents' Case, supra, that the gov hurt. ernment 'has the sole right, as trustee of the public inter est, to inspect, regulate, control, and direct the corporation, Payment of Wages. — In re House Bill No. its funds and franchises.' It is one of the gravest con 1230, 28 L. R. A. 344, the Massachusetts judges ditions of the century in which we live, and of which leg answer the legislature, on requirement of their opin islators have been compelled to make oliservation, that the victims of the excessive use of alcoholic stimulants, nar ion, that a statute requiring manufacturers to pay cotics, etc., have grown to be legion, not of healthy, robust wages of their employees wreekly, although applying manhood, but of broken, debauched, and decrepit men, to individuals as well as to corporations, is valid under against whom and for whom, as a class, public sentiment the Constitution which authorizes legislation over " all has a right to appeal to the legislature for protection. manner of wholesome and reasonable orders, laws, Lord Bacon has said, ' That all the crimes on earth do statutes and ordinances," " for the good and welfare not destroy so many of the human race, nor alienate so of the commonwealth," and makes no express pro much property, as drunkenness.' Mr. Justice Harlan, de vision for freedom of contracting. This is probably livering the opinion of the court in Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U. S. 623, says: 'There is no justification for holding that the first time that such legislation has been upheld in the State, under the guise merely of police regulations, is respect to individuals. The Court say : here aiming to deprive the citizen of his constitutional "It is well known that in some of the States of this rights; for we cannot shut out of view the fact, within the country legislation similar to that proposed has been held knowledge of* all, that the public health, the public morals, unconstitutional by the courts, sometimes on the ground that it is partial in its character, but more frequently on and the public safety may be endangered by the use of in the ground that it interferes with what is called the liberty toxicating drinks; nor the fact, established by statistics ac cessible to every one, that the idleness, disorder, pauperism, of contract, which, it is said, either as a privilege or as and crime existing in the country are in some degree, at property, is secured to the inhabitants of a State by its con least, traceable to this evil.' Mr. Tiedeman, in his work stitution, or by the Constitution of the United States. In on the Limitation of Police Powers, says : ' It is the policy some of these decisions a distinction has been suggest of some States, notably New York, to establish asylums for ed or made between the rights of natural persons and the the inebriate, where habitual drunkards are received and rights of corporations, and such legislation has been deemed valid with respect to, corporations whose charters subjected to a course of medical treatment, which is calcu lated to effect a cure of the disease of drinking, as it is were subject to alteration, amendment, or repeal by the leg islature, or which, being foreign corporations, were per claimed to be. A large part of human suffering is the al most direct result of drunkenness, and it is certainly to the mitted to do business in the state under such conditions as
