Williams v. Evans
| Decision Date | 21 December 1917 |
| Docket Number | 19,166,19,167 |
| Citation | 165 N.W. 495,139 Minn. 32 |
| Parties | E. W. WILLIAMS v. ELIZA P. EVANS AND OTHERS; A.M. RAMER COMPANY v. SAME |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Petition for Rehearing Filed March 1, 1918
Two actions in the district court for Ramsey county. The Williams action was by a taxpayer on his own behalf and on behalf of other taxpayers similarly situated. The Ramer action was by the owner of a manufacturing plant at which a large number of women workers, adult and minor, were employed. Both actions were to restrain the members of the Minimum Wage Commission from expending any money in furtherance of the provisions of Laws 1913, p. 789, c. 547, and to restrain defendant Iverson as state auditor, from auditing any claims incurred by the commission on account of anything done under the provisions of the act and to restrain him from issuing any warrant in payment of any such claim.
Plaintiffs obtained orders requiring defendants to show cause why a temporary injunction should not issue. From an order in each case, Catlin, J., granting plaintiffs' motion for a temporary injunction, defendants appealed. From an order in the Ramer case overruling their demurrer to the complaint defendants appealed. Reversed.
Constitution -- state legislature -- Fourteenth Amendment -- liberty of contract.
1. The state legislature possesses all legislative power not withheld or forbidden by the state or Federal Constitution. The provisions of the state Constitution, so far as here applicable, are not more restrictive than the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. This amendment guarantees liberty of contract, subject to regulation under the police power of the state.
Master and servant -- minimum wage act -- police power.
2. Chapter 547, Laws 1913, establishing a Minimum Wage Commission and providing for the determination and establishment of minimum wages for women and minors, is a valid exercise of the police power of the state.
Constitution -- delegation of legislative power.
3. The legislature cannot delegate legislative power, but it may delegate authority or discretion to be exercised under and in pursuance of the law. It may delegate power to determine some fact or state of things upon which the law makes its own operation depend.
Constitution.
4. This act was a complete statute when it left the legislature, and does not delegate legislative power to the Minimum Wage Commission.
Constitution -- minimum wage act valid.
5. Inequalities of minor importance do not render a law invalid. The limitations of the Constitution are flexible enough to permit of practical application.
Lyndon A. Smith, Attorney General, John C. Nethaway, Assistant Attorney General, and Alva R. Hunt, for appellants.
The experience of the world and our common knowledge are continually changing. Things unknown a century ago are now familiar to us all; children of today are fully acquainted with modern inventions, such as telephones, electric lights, and other modern improvements; this common knowledge is not the same as it was even 25 years ago. Therefore the power of government termed the police power, being based upon common knowledge of what is injurious to the health, morals or welfare of the public, must of necessity be elastic as is the common knowledge itself. When that experience and knowledge have taught us that certain things are injurious in any of these respects, then the police power expands to meet the necessity caused by our increased knowledge.
Under our form of government the legislature determines whether conditions call for corrective legislation. Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623, 660, 8 S.Ct. 273, 31 L.Ed. 205. The legislature, in passing laws intended to advance and protect the common welfare of society, need not wait until the opinions are all one way, or until all doubts that certain conditions are harmful, are removed by investigation. It is sufficient if the question of the baleful effect is debatable. Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412, 28 S.Ct. 324, 52 L.Ed. 551; Matter of Viemeister, 179 N.Y. 235, 72 N.E. 97; State v. Layton, 160 Mo. 474. When a law is attacked as not being a valid exercise of the police power, evidence is not admissible to overcome common knowledge. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11, 25 S.Ct. 358, 49 L.Ed. 643.
If there were but one community in the state where the wage-earning women in the factories, stores and offices, were receiving less than living wages, and it was merely a debatable fact that such low wages underfed the women, tended to affect their strength and health, and tended to cause any number of them to accept the easy alternative of immorality to increase their income to meet their needs, the court would take judicial notice of those things and uphold any police regulation which in the judgment of the legislature tended to remedy the evil. In order to sustain the law, the court is not required to find beyond a reasonable doubt, that the conditions exist and that the enforcement of the law will tend to cure the evil; but to overthrow the law it must find beyond a reasonable doubt that the conditions do not exist, or that the means sought will not tend to remedy the evil.
Woman's weaker physical structure, her maternal functions and necessary dependency on man, place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for existence. Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412, 421, 28 S.Ct. 324, 52 L.Ed. 551.
There is no literature tending to prove that wages, below a living wage, do not tend to injuriously affect the health and morals of wage-earning women. The literature is all the other way, and there are volumes of it. The reports of the numerous commissions, established by law in the various states, expressly to inquire into the condition of wage-earning women, are entitled to great weight. Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage (1912); Louise B. Moore, Study of Standards and Cost of Living (1907); Elizabeth B. Butler, Women and the Trades (1909); Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2nd Session (1912).
Laws have been passed in a dozen or more states regulating the hours of labor of women and all have been upheld as a proper exercise of the police power for the protection and preservation of the public health. They are all based upon the principle that women are in a class by themselves, in the nature of wards of the state, or dependents, that any legislation necessary for the protection of their health and general welfare, is for the general welfare, and private rights must yield for the common good. Comm. v. Riley, 210 Mass. 287, 97 N.E. 367; W.C. Ritchie & Co. v. Wayman, 244 Ill. 509, 91 N.E. 695; People v. Elerding, 254 Ill. 579, 98 N.E. 982; Ex parte Miller, 162 Cal. 687, 124 P. 427; Withney v. Bloem, 163 Mich. 419, 128 N.W. 913; State v. Dominion Hotel, 17 Ariz. 267, 151 P. 958.
So laws which not only fix the hours of labor but also fix the minimum wage have been held valid. Malette v. City of Spokane, 77 Wash. 205, 137 P. 496; Atkin v. Kansas, 191 U.S. 207, 210, 24 S.Ct. 124, 48 L.Ed. 148; State v. Midwest Const. Co. (Kan.) 162 P. 1175; Byars v. State, 2 Okla. Cr. 481, 102 P. 804; Clark v. State, 142 N.Y. 101, 36 N.E. 817.
Felix Frankfurter, attorney for the Consumer's League, as amicus curiae, filed a copy of his brief in Stettler v. O'Hara, 243 U.S. 629.
Brown, Abbott & Somsen and Young, O'Brien & Stone, for respondents.
It is settled by Federal decisions that: (1) Hours of labor may be fixed in public works -- that is, in works for the state or its municipal subdivisions -- free from interference by Federal authority; (2) hours of labor of men cannot be fixed in private employment, unless the employment is visibly injurious to public health; (3) hours of labor for women may be fixed by law in public or private employment. Atkin v. Kansas, 191 U.S. 207, 24 S.Ct. 124, 48 L.Ed. 148; Holden v. Hardy, 169 U.S. 366, 18 S.Ct. 383, 42 L.Ed. 780; Mueller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412, 28 S.Ct. 324, 52 L.Ed. 551.
There is no analogy between laws relating exclusively to hours of labor and laws fixing a minimum wage, except so far as both interfere with the liberty of contract, which is one of the rights included in the "liberty" protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The act is unconstitutional because it is subversive of the political and economic principles upon which our governmental system rests. Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 48, 25 S.Ct. 539, 49 L.Ed. 937 (bakery case); Peterson v. Widule, 157 Wis. 641, 147 N.W. 966, 52 L.R.A. (N.S.) 790, and because it is in violation of Const. (Minn.) art. 1, § 7, and Amendment 14 of the Federal Constitution, and deprives respondent and others in his class, of the liberty to contract, taking their property without due process of law. The act is unconstitutional because it delegates legislative authority to the Minimum Wage Commission, created by the act. State v. Chicago, M. & St. P. Ry. Co. 38 Minn. 281, 37 N.W. 782; Brenke v. Borough of Belle Plaine, 105 Minn. 84, 117 N.W. 157. (a) The legislative question of whether there shall be a legal wage at all, and if so when and under what circumstances it shall be put into effect, is placed by the act in the power and discretion of the commission. (b) Under sections 7-9 of the act the commission by the aid of its advisory boards in its uncontrolled discretion and judgment produces the legal wage, and assumes to exercise under those sections the highest legislative authority. (c) The legislative question of when or under what circumstances a wage once fixed shall be repealed or amended is placed in the unlimited discretion of the commission by section 10. (d) By section 11 the commission is vested with power to amend the wage law at its pleasure, excepting persons from its operation.
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