public warehouses for the different periods of time designated in the enactment. Vide §11, supra. The issues presented demand the consideration of questions of capital importance, not only to the industrial and property interests within the state, but other questions even more grave and serious than those of property—questions which have to do with the fundamental rights of individuals, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as such rights stand related to legislative power when acting within its proper constitutional sphere.
Before stating our conclusions upon the particular facts of the case under consideration, we invite attention to the proposition of fact now familiar to the profession, that as a result of memorable forensic struggles and repeated judicial affirmations by courts of the highest rank in this country, both state and federal, the right of legislative regulation and control over the business carried on in grain elevators and warehouses, to the extent of prescribing their maximum rates of compensation, has become firmly established, and must now be regarded by the courts as beyond the realm of debate. Whatever the principles may be upon which such legislation is sustained, it is undeniable that it has been repeatedly sustained by the ablest courts this country. True it is that dissenting opinions of marked ability have been affixed to the majority opinions in the eases where the doctrine’ has been enunciated, but the writer knows of no judicial authority denying the existence of the doctrine of legislative control. The doctrine was first broadly asserted in recent times in a noted case decided by the supreme court of the state of Illinois. Munn v. People, 69 Ill. 80. The case arose under a statute which in all essential features is the same as that under consideration. The statute was enacted to give force and practical effect to an amendment (§ 1, art. 13) of the state constitution, which reads as follows: “All elevators or storehouses where grain or other property is stored for compensation, whether the property stored be kept separated or not, are declared to be public warehouses.” This amendment was adopted in 1870, and in 1871 the legislature of Illinois divided public warehouses into three classes, prescribed the taking of a license and the giving of a bond, and fixed a
