The
Volume XXI
Green
Bag
August, 1909
Number 8
The Police Power in its Application to the Regulation and Limitation of Hours of Labor By S. J. Wettrick Formerly of the Cleveland Bar, Now of the Seattle Bar IN taking up this subject it is not a novelty. In the preface to his treatise our intention to enter into a dis on the "Limitations of the Police Power cussion of fundamental social, political in the United States" he says:— or economic theories as to the wisdom, For many years after popular government policy or constitutionality of the exer was established in the English-speaking cise of the police power to regulate and world there was no marked disposition mani limit the hours of labor. To do so fested by the majority to interfere with the would involve us in the abstractions like liberty of the minority. On the con trary, the sphere of governmental action was suggested by such titles as "Paternalism confined within the smallest limits by the v. Individualism" and "Governmental popularization of the so-called laissez faire Interference v. Laissez faire," all of doctrine, which denies to the government the power to do more than provide for the which we wish to carefully avoid. It may be that governmental inter public order and personal security by the prevention and punishment of crimes and ference has gone, or is going, too far. trespasses. Under the influence of this doc As early as 1886, Prof. Tiedeman was trine, the encroachments of government upon so alarmed about this tendency that the rights of the individual in the past cen he felt it his duty to point out the exact tury have been comparatively few. But limitations of the police power in the the political pendulum is again swinging in the opposite direction and the doctrine of United States, in the hope that he governmental inactivity in economic matters might "awaken the public mind to a is attacked daily with increasing vehemence. full appreciation of the power of con Governmental interference is proclaimed and stitutional limitation to protect private demanded as a sufficient panacea for every right against the radical experimenta social evil which threatens the prosperity of society Contemplating tion of social reformers." It is inter these extraordinary demands the esting to note the anxiety of this author conservative classes stand in constant fear of in regard to this matter at a time when the advent of an absolutism more tyranical legislation under the police power had and more unreasoning than any before ex not gone to the extremes of today, and perienced by man, the absolutism of a demo cratic majority. when its application to the regulation Thus wrote Tiedeman in 1886. Since and limitation of hours of labor was yet
