Court Opinion

ID: 3619344
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-06 00:01:33.523106+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:45:34.963619
License: Public Domain

I dissent from the judgment of the majority of the court in this case. It is unnecessary to enlarge upon the subject, but I desire to record my grounds of dissent as clearly as I can.
The act does not state that it is passed in order to preserve the public health. It is sought to be upheld on that ground and as an exercise of that branch of the police power of the state which pertains to the public health. It seems plain to me that the statute has no legitimate tendency to preserve, protect or defend the public health. Any plumber, however ignorant of his trade he may be, can, under this act, be employed to do any kind of plumbing work, and without having his work subjected to any kind of supervision or inspection. He is absolutely free and so is his work. The statute only prohibits him from employing others to work for him, from being, in other words, a master plumber. In order to become a master plumber he must obtain this certificate. The chance to obtain it lies through an examination into his capacity and his knowledge of his trade, to be certified to by the board of examiners, of which a proportion of master plumbers is to form a part. Thus his right to work in his trade is circumscribed and limited by force of this statute, and he is compelled to pay a certain amount before he is permitted to pass the examination.
It is said this is proper and right in order that the public may have some assurance that the master or employing plumber is not alone capable of following his trade as such, but that he has sufficient knowledge of the laws of health as applicable to plumbing to enable him scientifically to follow that trade as a master plumber. It is to be observed that the *Page 541 
examination does not necessarily call for any such knowledge. The act can be complied with, so far as this examination is concerned, if the applicant has but the most ordinary knowledge of the laws of his trade and the proper way to follow it practically. It is true the board may demand much more than that, and much more than was ever necessary to practically pursue the trade. If such additional knowledge were exacted it would be in fact adding to the known and ordinary qualifications necessary to carry on the well-recognized trade of a plumber, those other and entirely different and much superior qualifications necessary in one who intended to conduct the professional business of a sanitary expert with regard to systems and general plans of plumbing. The legislature has no power to impose such a condition upon one desiring to exercise such a trade. It has, as I believe, no power to prescribe that an individual who desires to follow the trade of a plumber shall be possessed of qualifications which do not naturally pertain to such a calling, and which are only possessed by persons qualified for the pursuit of a very different occupation, involving learning and skill of an uncommon order. The legislature might probably provide for a sanitary inspection of plumbing work and thus secure a kind of work, as to its system and sufficiency, which might fairly be said to tend towards the protection of the health of the general public. But the trade of the practical plumber is not one of the learned professions, nor does such a tradesman hold himself out in any manner as an expert in the science of "sanitation," nor is any such knowledge expected of him, and this act, when practically enforced, may or may not exact it of him. This board has the very greatest and an entirely arbitrary discretion as to what qualifications it will exact from the applicant. It may make an examination which none but an expert in sanitary knowledge could pass, or it may make the examination entirely perfunctory. Judging from the other features of the act, it will depend upon considerations which are foreign to any question of health as to what kind of examination will be made. *Page 542 
If the broader and more severe examination is held, or the greater qualification is insisted on, the imposition of such a condition in the case of a workman upon his natural right to work at his ordinary trade renders the act under which such a condition can be imposed unconstitutional. Whether in all cases the condition would be insisted on is immaterial. It is the power to insist upon it under the law which makes the law itself void.
And yet, if the more severe examination is not made, and the superior qualification exacted, the act is absolutely worthless as a health measure. If it is intended as an act simply to secure the ordinary capacity necessary for the prosecution of the trade of a plumber, it is useless and vexatious, and not a health regulation in any form. If it exact more, it is an improper addition to the qualifications of a simple tradesman. This act permits the greater exaction to be made.
It seems to me very absurd to treat this statute as one which in any possible manner affects, or which was really intended to affect, the public health. And when it is seen that the work of the master plumber may be performed by journeymen who have been subjected to no official examination, and whose work need not be examined by any one, not even by the master plumber himself, the radical failure of the act to really protect the public health is quite apparent. Sewer gas is dangerous, but exactly how to treat the matter of plumbing in order to run the least danger therefrom, is a subject for professional learning and skill, except as to the narrow part of the tradesman-plumber, which is to see to it that his pipes do not leak, and that they do not permit the escape of gas. This part is mechanical and easily understood, and is the part which the tradesman performs, and the system, the proper arrangement thereof, and such kindred questions, are for the determination of a more scientific and a more learned body of men.
The examination provided for by this act, if conducted for the sole purpose of discovering the qualifications of an applicant in regard to those matters which pertain and are germane *Page 543 
to the real and practical trade of a plumber, will not have the slightest tendency to discover whether he has also the requisite knowledge to enable him to act as a sanitary expert.
Taking the act as a whole, it would seem quite apparent that its purpose is to enable the employing plumbers to create a sort of guild or body among themselves, into which none is to be permitted to enter excepting as he may pass an examination, the requisites of which are not stated, and where his success or failure is to be determined by a board of which some of their own number are members. In order to be at liberty to exercise his trade as a master plumber he must pass this examination and become a member of this favored body. It is difficult for me to see the least resemblance to a health regulation in all this.
I think the act is vicious in its purpose and that it tends directly to the creation and fostering of a monopoly.
It seems to me most unfortunate that this court should, by a strained construction of the act as a health law, give its sanction to this kind of pernicious legislation. We shut our eyes to the evident purpose of the statute, and by means of maxims well enough in their way, but sadly out of place here, impute a purpose to the legislature which it plainly did not have, and which, if it did have, it has failed to carry out, even conceding that the purpose could be legitimately effected by other means. This measure detracts from the liberty of the citizen acting as a tradesman in his efforts to support himself and his family by the honest practice of a useful trade, and I think no court ought to sanction such legislation unless it tends much more plainly than does this act towards the preservation of the health and comfort of the public.
I think the orders of the courts below were wrong and should be reversed and the prisoner discharged.
ANDREWS, Ch. J., FINCH and HAIGHT, JJ., concur with GRAY, J., for affirmance.
O'BRIEN and BARTLETT, JJ., concur with PECKHAM, J., for reversal.
Order affirmed. *Page 544