The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-10-12
JAMES L. TANNER SAYS
 LEGISLATIVE ENACTMENT
 GAN REGULATE MINING

tablished by the interstate commerce act and the difference between the common carrier and the shipper as regulated by this act, and the difference that now ex- ist between the miners and the operators can and will be within short while regulated by statute, and after that without doing violence to either the fifth and fourteent amendments to the federal constitution which reads as fol- lows:
 B. NO person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law"
 IA. .sNo state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of the citizens of the United States, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty. or property without due process Of law' nor deny to any person the equal pro tection of the laws"
 Reviewed by Supreme Court.
 These constitutional provisions have from time without number been reviewed by the United States supreme court, and from the adiudicated cases find that the passing of an act by state legislature to fix the minimum amount of wages to coal or other miners, would, not be Tn contravention of either the fifth or four- teenth amendment, if 1t is made to ap-
  and welfare of the state and It's fnhabi- tants demanded it.
 In the case of Mum, 94 U. s., the court says: "The government regulates the conduct of it's citizens one toward an- other. and the manner in which each shall use his own property when such regula- tions become necessary for the public good. In their exercise it has been GUS tomary in England from time immenorial and in this country from its first coloniza- tion, to regulate ferries, common carriers, hackmen, bakers, millers, wharftngers, inn-keepeTs, etc., and in so doing TO nx the maximum charge to be made Tor ser vices rendered, accommodations furnished and articles sold. To this day statutes arc to be found in many of the states upon some or all of these subjects, ana we think 1t has never yet been successfully contended that such legislation came without any of the constitutional pronipi- tons against the interference of private property"
 A Maximum Fee.
 Tn the Frisbie case, 157 U. S., 1t was held in passing upon an act or coiisress making it a misdemeanor for an attorney or other person to demand or cneIse greater fee than $10 in the prosecution or a pension claim. and in passing upon the const,tutionality of the question as tc rvbether this was an interference With inc liberty of citizen in making con- tract. says: "The act under which the indictment was found is contended to be unconstitutional because it interferes with the price of labor and the freedom of contract This objection, as well as the first. is also untenable While it may be conceded that. generally speaking, among the. inalienable rights of the citi- zens is that of the liberty of contract, yet such liberty1s not absolute and uni- versal It is within the undoubted powers of government to restrain some individual from all contracts, as well as all individ- uais from some contracts. It may deny to all the right to contract for the purchase or sale of lottery tickets; to the minor the right tn assume any obligations ex- cept for the necessaries of existence: to