THE COAL MINES AND THE LAW. By Bruce Wyman. ON the morning of the day on which this review was written the newspapers had the good news that the great coal strike was ended by the submission by both opera tors and miners of the whole controversy to the arbitration of the board appointed by the President of the United States. To those of us who had asserted against hope that this time of straits was, like other stringencies in the market, a temporary stoppage, the out come must seem peculiarly happy. For to many of us the situation had seemed most dangerous in the possibility that some at tempt might be made by some violent process of law to wrest the mines from their owners; that in the then exasperation some court might be found to wrench the law out of its regular course and award some extraordinary remedy. Therefore those of us who main tained that there must be no overturn of private rights, even in so trying an exigency, feel a great relief in this settlement without any resort to the courts by any of the three parties in interest: the miners, the operators, or the public. The author of the pamphlet 1 under review was one of the most militant of those who demanded that the mines be opened by legal process, because it seemed to him that in no other way could a situation which was in tolerable be brought to an end (p. 38). In the first weeks after its publication this es say made a great stir, so forcible was its advice; the newspapers took up its cause, so popular was its appeal; even lawyers discussed it with heat, so fundamental were the issues it raised. Now that the crisis to "The Coal Mines and the Publ1c. By Heman W. Chaplin. Boston and New York. J. B. Millet Company. 1902, pp. 63.
which it had application is past, perhaps the time has come when it may be reviewed with calmer judgment. Any discussion of the foundations of our industrial relations must begin with Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 113. The General As sembly of Illinois passed a statute in 1871 which provided a maximum charge for the storage of grain in public elevators. The firm of Munn & Scott refused to obey this act; therefore they were fined; thereupon they appealed from court to court, until the Supreme Court of the United States con firmed the decisions against them. What was laid down in that case is with us the basis of all public duties and all private rights : "Looking then to the Common Law, from whence came the right which the Constitu tion protects, we find that when private property is affected with a public interest, it ceases to be jus privati. . . . Property does become clothed with a public interest when used in a manner to make it of public conse quence, and affect the community at large. When, therefore, one devotes his property to a use in which the public has an interest, he, in effect, grants to the public an interest in that use, and must submit to be controlled by the public for the common good to the ex tent of the interest he has thus created. He may withdraw his grant by discontinuing the use; but so long as he maintains the use he must submit to the control " (p. 20). It is not too much to say that no more important decision than this has ever been made by the Supreme Court of the United States; for upon the right understanding of this case depends the true conception of our general theory of the place of the State. Yet the sweeping principles laid down in
