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THE GREEN BAG
evidence in this case did not warrant a con viction." The ruling of this case undoubtedly seriously neutralizes the value of many, if not all, inspection laws, as in most instances violations of the law can easily be con cealed if only a short time for concealment is given, and especially if the officer can be directed through outlying parts of the fac tory before being conducted to the place which he really desires to inspect. The writer while seeking to enforce the child labor law of Illinois had repeatedly re ported to him cases where children under the statutory age had been found concealed in closets and on the roofs of the factories which the inspectors had visited, and numer ous cases where dangerous machinery had been removed or covered. The holding, nevertheless, is in accord with the spirit of the law. We must bear in mind that our factories and workshops are not, as a rule, licensed, and that there is therefore no con dition of inspection imposed upon them as a consideration for such license. The in spections, however salutary, are, we must confess, in the main merely for the purpose of obtaining evidence. They are not to abate nuisances already known to exist. They are not to recover stolen property nor property known to be held in violation of the law, nor to prevent batteries or affrays known to be in process, nor to arrest crim inals. They are rather to detect violations of the law — to spy out the land. Before, therefore, the right to inspect such un licensed premises can be insisted on at all, and even in many instances before the right to exact a license at all, the premise must be laid down and accepted, that the businesses are businesses public in their nature and affected with a public interest; that the factory and the workshop and the store and the mine are not castles. Personally and at the risk of being branded as a socialist, the writer believes that such a position should be taken once and for all. He believes that under our
complex civilization no man can truthfully say that his business is his own and his awn alone, and that the public has no concern in it. This was the position taken by the late Mr. George M. Pullman when asked by a citizens' committee in Chicago to arbi trate the controversy with his employees which led to the Debs strike. He main tained that he was competent to and had the right to manage his own affairs. And yet an investigation showed that it cost the public almost three times as much to police the property of Mr. Pullman and to protect it as was obtained from the com pany in taxes even in times of industrial quiet. It is too well known that the con troversy resulted in what closely approxi mated a civil war. The most effective weapons that Mr. Pullman relied upon was his ability to compel the railroads to live up to the contracts which they had made with him for the hauling of his cars. It was because the strikers sought to compel the violation of these contracts that the Debs strike was unlawful,1 and it was be cause the railroads dared not break these contracts that they in turn resisted the strikers. But if it had not been for the courts which stood ready to enforce these contracts, if it had not been for the strong right arms and bayonets of the public which are behind the mandates of the courts, and without which the mandates of the courts would be nullities, these con tracts would have had no effect. No man in America can say that he is independent of the law, or independent of the courts, and that the public has no concern with his private business, as long as he depends upon the public to enforce his rights and to enforce his contracts. The change of front, indeed, which has recently taken place in the decisions of the Supreme Courts of Ten nessee and of West Virginia 2 and which has 1 See opinion in People v. Dow, supra. » State v. Peel Splint Coal Co., 36 W. Va. 8o» 17 L. R. A. 385, 15 S. E. 1000; Harbison v. Knoxville Iron Co., 103 Tenn. 421, 56 L. R. A. 316 53 S.W.9SS-
