George Howard Earle, Jr.

“ Due protection of the rights of property has been regarded as a vital principle of Republican institutions. 'Next in degree to the right of personal liberty * * * is the right of enjoying private property without undue interference or molestation.' The requirement that the property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation is but 'an affirmance of a great doctrine established by the Common Law for the protection of private property. ”

“ There can be no earthly reason, no reasonable foundation, for legislating that any citizen of the United States should be permitted to wage war against the vital interests of his country. And as food entirely arises and is produced from the soil, and can never serve its purpose if there destroyed, to no class should these prohibitions more urgently apply than those engaged in such primary production ”

“ It must not be forgotten, also, that the Supreme Court of the United States has, again and again, determined that the freedom of pursuit is constitutionally protected, and is only subject to such limitation or regulation by legislation as can be shown to be warranted by public welfare; and that there is no disagreement among those really well informed that such attempts at regulation are, on the contrary, pernicious to the last degree ”

“ If the State can wrench the control of the prices of commodities from the hands of all the people exercising their inalienable right of pursuit through the means of free competition pursued at their free discretions, it is, of course, inevitably fixing the compensation for their services and labors. ”

“ The Court declared the Illinois Statute was unconstitutional as it was discriminatory and repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides "that no State shall * * * deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The Court pointed out that under the Statute all persons engaged in trade or commerce, except agriculturalists and raisers of livestock, who combined their capital, skill or acts might be punished as criminals, while the latter might combine to destroy competition and control prices for their own benefit without a violation of law. ”

“ It has been established that those things which tend to monopoly are illegal, because an invasion of freedom; it has been established that the fruits of property are property itself, that, in taking them in whole or part, you take property ”

“ One or the other must we choose, if the public is pleased to occupy itself in the future with the price question. * * * And so soon as the forces operating on price are understood to be complex and of a nature not to be interfered with by legislation, we shall be freed from a dangerous agitation. * * * sooner or later, the United States must face the inevitable political issue between the socialistic and non-socialistic conceptions of Government. ”

“ To legislate in favor of the inefficient at the expense of the efficient is to put demagoguery on the throne and discourage the very qualities on which the stability and moral growth of society always have, and always must, depend. ”

“ It is following the tendency to look to the State for aid when individual effort begins to be distasteful; it removes the incentive to industry from those weaklings who need to know that success is not the fruit of idleness and shiftlessness. ”

“ The subject is simplified, however, by understanding certain fundamental conceptions of our law. In the first place, it has been settled for centuries, and in accordance with sound reasoning, that property really consists in the free enjoyment of its fruits. ”

“ Upon this subject the Supreme Court, in treating of legislation providing that one man's property should be vested in another private person, says: [8] It "would, if effectual, deprive the former of his property without due process of law. * * * Such an enactment would not receive judicial sanction in any country having a written Constitution distributing the powers of Government among three co-ordinate departments, and committing to the judiciary, expressly or by implication, authority to enforce the provisions of such Constitution. ”

“ These provisions, it is conceived, are far from complimentary to the patriotism of a very large class, of which the writer is one, who, there is no reason to believe, wish to commit crimes against the welfare of their country in a time of its greatest peril. ”

“ Connolly refused to pay the notes at maturity on the sole ground that the Union Company was: (1) a trust or combination contrary to the common law, (2) a combination contrary to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, (3) and a combination contrary to the Illinois Anti-Trust Act. Under the Illinois Act it was provided that any contract made by a company violating the act was "absolutely void and not enforcible." This Act also contained the following vital section: "The provisions of this act shall not apply to agricultural products or livestock while in the hands of the producer or raiser." ”

“ If a man seised of lands in fee by his deed granteth to another the profit of those lands, to have and to hold to him and his heires, and maketh livery secundum forman chartae, the whole land itselfe doth passe ”