NOTES OF RECENT CASES ing law governing rate regulation. It is, of course, indispensable to weighing the reasonableness of a schedule of rates to analyze the returns of receipts and expenditures given out by the corporation in question. Not every receipt is income property, still less is every disbursement an annual charge. It is plain as the case states, that permanent im provements should not be charged solely against the traffic of the year they are constructed. And it is well that the law should be made clearer by pointing out the special character of Union Pacific Case supra. B. W. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. (Equal Protection of Laws — Peonage.) U. S. D. C, S. C. — South Carolina has a law providing that any laborer working for a share of the crop or for wages in money or other valuable consideration under a contract for labor on farm land, who shall receive advances either in money or supplies, and there after willfully and without just cause fail to per form the reasonable service required of him by the terms of the contract, shall be liable to prose cution for misdemeanor and punishment by imprisonment. This law was enacted as a weapon to compel especially negro farm laborers to per form the service required by their' contracts of employment on pain of being sent to jail or being made members of the chain gang. The consti tutionality of this law was attacked in ex parte Drayton 153 Fed. Rep. 986. The court held that the act could not be justified as within the police power of the state; that as it was intended to cover agricultural laborers only it violated the equality clause of the 14th amendment of the Constitution of the United States, and that as it authorized the creation of a system of peonage or involuntary servitude it violated the 13th amend ment. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. (Police Power — Labor Law.) N. Y. — The validity of the New York law prohibiting the employment of females, regardless of age, in factories between nine o'clock P.M. and six o'clock A.M. came up for final determination by the state courts in People v. Williams, 81 N. E. Rep. 778. The Court of Special Sessions of the First Division of the City of New York (100 N. Y. S. 337) held the law un constitutional as infringing the constitutional right to contract. This decision was affirmed by the Appellate Division by a divided court (101 N. Y. S. 562, 116 App. Div. 379). The Court of Appeals now affirms the decision of the court below and holds the law unconstitutional on the same grounds as the Court of Special Sessions. The court says that the courts have gone very far .in upholding legislative enactments framed dearly
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for the welfare, comfort and health of the com munity. But when it is sought, as here, arbi trarily to prevent an adult female citizen from working at any time of the day that suits her, it is time to call a halt. Such a law arbitrarily deprives citizens of their right to contract with each other. It behooves the courts, firmly and fearlessly, to interpose the barriers of their judg ment to the growing tendency of the legislatures to interfere with the lawful pursuits of citizens. As an analogous case the court cites the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Lochner v. State of New York, 198 U. S. 45. 2 5 SuP- Ct- 539. 49 L. Ed. 937, wherein the court held as uncon stitutional a law restricting the hours of labor for the emplo yces of bakers. It is to be noticed that in this case the court took particular occasion to remark that it found "nothing in the language of the section which suggests the purpose of promoting health except as it might be inferred that for a woman to work during the forbidden hours would be unhealthful. If " the court said, " the inhibition of the section had been framed to prevent the ten hours of work from being performed at night or to prolong them beyond nine o'clock in the evening it might more readily be appreciated that the health of women was the matter of legislative concern." In short the opinion does not in any way hold that no dis tinction can be made between man and woman in matters of police regulation, nor that the legisla tures may not recognize the undoubted fact that the woman is the mother of the future citizen, that a debilitated mother means a debilitated offspring, that the majority of factory operatives are either already married or afterwards marry, and that women are not capable of enduring, without injury, long hours of labor or arduous toil. The fact seems also to have been entirely overlooked by the court — perhaps was not argued by counsel, that the real motive and purpose of the legislative enactment was not so much to preserve health as to preserve morals. For there can be no doubt, that the measure was urged by the most intelligent of its advocates because they thought it necessary to take some steps to save the young women employed in the factories from the temptations, insults and exposure which accompany the traveling upon the public streets late at night or in the early hours of the morning. ANDREW A. BRUCE. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. (Taxation.) U. S. S. C. — A perplexing question relating to the taxing power of a state was decided in Buck v. Beach, 27 Sup. Ct. Rep. 712. In this case, it appears that a resident of New York had made
