The Hour Has Come submit to the several states the decision of the question in each locality of what shall and what shall not be articles of traffic in the interstate commerce of the country?—if so.it has left to each state, according to its own caprice and arbi trary will, to discriminate for or against every article grown, produced, manufac tured or sold in any state and sought to be introduced as an article of commerce into any other," and that which afterwards appears in the opinion, if fairly weighed, gives no ground for apprehension. The safeguard lies in the fourteenth amend ment, which provides that no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law. Every unreasonable statute is invalid under this provision, and by enforcing this provision the federal courts can put a stop to all unreasonable legislation. The Supreme Court certainly had no grounds for apprehension in the Bow man case. It could not contend that the prohibition of the sale of liquor, if deemed necessary by the state, was an unreasonable exercise of legislative power, since it itself repeatedly held that liquor, although a subject of commerce, was more or less tainted and that a
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state might constitutionally prohibit its manufacture and sale within its borders without violating the fourteenth amend ment or depriving any one of fife, liberty or property without due process of law. It had even gone so far as to hold that no compensation need be given to brewers and others who had been ruined by the adoption of a state prohibitory policy and whose buildings and invest ments had been rendered worthless.• The trouble lies in the fact that the Court failed to make a distinction be tween provisions which were social and moral and those which were commercial. The dread expressed in the opinion that the state, if allowed to restrict the im portation of liquor, would restrict the importation of articles generally and for commercial purposes alone is worthy of but little consideration. Every one con cedes and has always conceded that such regulations would be invalid, not merely as unjustifiable regulations of interstate commerce, but as deprivations of property without due process of law. It has never been contended that the police powers of the state extend thus far. • Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U. S. 623.
The Hour Has Come By Harry R. Blythe VyHEN forth to the front With clangor of arms The soldier shall go 'Mid war's alarms To shoulder the brunt Of freedom's woe,
