Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/520

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494
NORTH DAKOTA REPORTS.

same service. Appellant had empty space in his warehouse which was available, and he was willing as a matter of business to receive and store the grain, but was unwilling to reduce his charges under legislative dictation. Appellant denies the validity of chapter 126, and especially § 11 thereof, and bases his defense wholly upon constitutional grounds; claiming that the statute is invalid because it deprives him of the free, untrammeled use of his property without due process of law, and deprives him of the equal protection of the law, as these fundamental rights are guarded against legislative encroachment by the constitution of the state and of the United States—citing § 13 of the constitution of this state, and § 1 of the fourteenth amendment of the constitution of the United States, in support of his contention. Appellant has purposely limited his defense to the one question of legislative power to regulate his warehouse business by prescribing rates. Nothing is alleged or claimed in argument tending to show that the prescribed rate would be noncompensatory; much less that it would operate practically to confiscate relator’s business as a warehouseman and grain dealer. It distinctly appears, moreover, that when relator tendered his grain for storage, not only that appellant owned and operated a grain elevator situated af} the railroad station in question, but further appeared “that said grain when so tendered, as aforesaid, was dry and in a suitable condition for storage, and there was in said grain elevator * * * at said time storage capacity for over twenty-five thousand bushels of grain, not in use and wholly unoccupied.” The answer to the writ states the entire scope of appellant’s contention in the paragraphs quoted below: “The respondent [appellant] refuses to comply with the provisions of said chapter 126, on the ground that it abridges his privileges and immunities as a citizen of the United States; that it deprives him of his liberty and property without due process of law, and denies to him the equal protection of the laws, and amounts toa regulation of commerce among the states;” ‘that the respondent denies that the legislature has any power whatever to say whether he shall rent the bins in his elevator or not; and wholly denies the power of the legislature to say what he shall charge for the use of his said elevator or the bins therein.”