ARBITRARY SEARCHES AND SEIZURES been sustained by the Supreme Court of the United States * is noticeable and full of significance. In these states the courts, after having for many years steadily re fused to allow the legislatures to interfere between employer and employee in the con troversies in the mining districts arising out of the contracts of employment, regard ing the method of the payment of wages, the weighing of the coal by which the wages should be determined, and the payment of the employees in orders on company or track stores, on the ground that these matters were matters of private and not of public concern, suddenly announced a new doctrine of legislative concern and jurisdiction. They took the position that the em ployer was a necessary unit in the body politic, that the public was vitally con cerned in his welfare, in protecting him from fraud, and in giving to him an equality as a contracting party. They also announced the rule, and emphasized it especially in the case of corporations, that wherever the conduct of private industries resulted in bloodshed and disorder, breaches of the peace or inconvenience to the public, the state had the right to regulate the same, and to that extent to interfere with individ ual liberty and the private right of property and of contract. They have thus paved the way for a body of law which shall look rather to the protection of society than that of the individual; to the interest of society rather than to those of vested rights; to the strengthening of the weak rather than to the entrenchment of the strong, and em phatically reiterated and applied to modern times the maxim that the public welfare is in truth the highest law. They have emphasized the obligation which all owe to the community as a whole. They have dealt a crushing blow to that conception of individual liberty which comes within the 1 Knoxville Iron Co. v. Harbison, 183 U. S. 13, 22 Sup. Ct. Rep. i; Dayton Coal & Iron Co. v. Barton, 183 U. S. 23, 22 Sup. Ct. Rep. 5; Holden v. Gardy, 169 U. S. 366, 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 383.
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definition of the orator of Shays's rebellion when he said: "My boys, you are going to fight for liberty. If you wish to know what liberty is, I will tell you. It is for every man to do what he pleases, to make other folks do as you please to have them, and to keep folks from serving the devil."1 Whatever rule of conduct may ultimately be decided upon, whether it be that of the collectivist or that of the individualist, the same should be definitely settled and rigidly adhered to. The existence or nonexistence of the right of privacy should not be left, as it is now so often, to the whim of the police and to the waves of popular excite ment or be dependent on the financial or political power of the parties sought to be interfered with. There has been but little litigation on these subjects, because in the past search warrants have not in America, nor has the power of summary arrest or the sweatbox process, or arbitrary entrance upon property, interfered with what we deem legitimate business interests, with the owners of property generally, nor with the influential members of the community. The power has been used against things which have been mala in se rather than •mala prohibita, against practices tainted with immorality as the term is generally used and which the clergy have condemned; they have generally been used for the con fusion of common gamblers, of thieves, and of other vulgar fellows. The public, for instance, has little concern with whether the tramp or the prostitute has the advan tage of due process of law. The power of entry, of inspection, and in a large measure of self-incrimination, is now being used, however, on broader lines and to enforce broader ideals. Our statutes interfere no longer with the outcasts of society alone, but with the so-called respectable classes of our citizens. Their provisions interfere with the right of employment, of managing Woodrow Wilson, Hist. Am. People, Vol. Ill, 58.
