of defendants, must be treated as though it means the name of all the individuals who are members of the corporation. It has long been settled that the word "person," within the meaning of the fourteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States applies to a corporation: Douglass v. Pacific etc. S. S. Co., 4 Cal. 306; Pasadena v. Stimson, 91 Cal. 248; Santa Clara County v. Southern Pac. R. R., 118 U. S. 394; Pembina Min. Co. v. Pennsylvania, 125 U. S. 181, 189; Missouri Pac. Ry. v. Mackey, 127 U. S. 205; Gulf etc. Ry. Co. v. Ellis, 165 U. S. 154.

The rule is admirably stated in the Railway Tax Cases, 13 Fed. Rep. 743, as follows: "Private corporations are, it is true, artificial persons, but, with the exception of a sole corporation, with which we are not concerned, they consist of aggregations of individuals united for some legitimate business. In this state, they are formed under general laws, and the Civil Code provides that they may be formed for any purpose for which individuals may lawfully associate themselves.' Any five or more persons may, by voluntary association, form themselves into a corporation. And, as a matter of fact, nearly all enterprises in this state requiring for their execution an expenditure of large capital are undertaken by corporations. It would be a most singular result if a constitutional provision intended for the protection of every person against partial and discriminating legislation by the states should cease to exert such protection the moment the person becomes a member of a corporation. We cannot accept such a conclusion. On the contrary, we think it is well established by numerous adjudications of the supreme courts of the several states that whenever a provision of the constitution or of a law guarantees to persons the enjoyment of property, or affords to them means for its protection, or prohibits legislation injuriously affecting it, the benefits of the provision extend to corporations, and that the courts will always look beyond the name of the artificial being to the individuals whom it represents."

The case was afterward taken to the supreme court of the United States (Railway Tax Cases, 118 U. S. 396), and on the opening of court, before argument, the chief justice said: "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the fourteenth amendment to the constitution which forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does." In discussing the

provisions of the statute in question it will, therefore, be regarded as settled that the word "corporation" refers to the members who constitute the corporation, and that the rights of ■ corporation are to be measured by the same laws as the rights of a person. The law should be made for all alike, for the rich as well as the poor, for the corporation as well as the laborer. In Cooley on Constitutional Limitations, sixth edition, page 483, it is said: "But everyone has a right to demand that he be governed by general rules, and a special statute which, without his consent, singles his case out as one to be regulated by a different law from that which is applied in all similar cases would not be legitimate legislation, but would be such an arbitrary mandate as is not within the province of free governments. Those who make the laws are to govern by promulgated established laws, not to be varied in particular cases, but to have one rule for rich and poor, for the favorite at court and the countryman at plow. This is a maxim in constitutional law, and by it we may test the authority and binding force of legislative enactments." In Wally v. Kennedy, 2 Yerg. 554, 24 Am. Dec. 511, it is said: "The rights of every individual must stand or fall by the same rule or law that governs every other member of the body politic, or land, under similar circumstances; and every partial or private law which directly proposes to destroy or affect individual rights, or does the same thing by affording remedies leading to similar consequences, is unconstitutional and void. Were it otherwise, odious individuals and 10 corporations would be governed by one law, the mass of the community and those who made the law by another, whereas the like general law affecting the whole community equally could not have been passed." Applying these principles to this act, it is clearly unconstitutional. It gives a first lien to laborers for the amount due them from corporations doing business in this state upon all the real and personal property of such corporations, and does not even require any description of the property or notice in any manner in order to make such lien valid. It seems to give the laborer the right to an attachment against the property of the corporation without requiring him to make the affidavit and file the undertaking required of all other persons in order to procure such attachment. It does not give this lien to any other class of laborers. The thousands. of laborers for individuals or copartnerships in the like employment do not have the benefit of it. The laborer toiling at the same kind of labor, felling the forest, tilling the soil, or dig

ging in the bowels of the earth, has no such lien if he is not working for a corporation doing business in this state. The lien attaches to the property of such corporation, but not to the property of an individual under precisely the same circumstances. Under general law, liens are given to all mechanics, artisans, laborers, or materialmen, and against all persons and corporations. Under the present statute, a lien is given to laborers performing labor for the particular corporations named. All other persons in the state, after obtaining an ordinary money judgment, must enforce it by the writ of execution, but laborers for such corporations under this statute have the right to have the court declare the amount found due them a lien on all the property of the corporation, which shall take preference over all other liens except recorded mortgages and deeds of trust. The grocer who, perhaps, has furnished the corporation the food with which the laborer has fed his wife. and children may have attached the property of the corporation for the purpose of securing himself, but the laborer's lien by the mighty hand of this statute at once sweeps it away. The materialman or contractor who has furnished the material for or constructed a building for the corporation, and who has filed his notice of lien as provided in the Code of Civil Procedure, and who may have secured a judgment 11 thereon, must stand by and see his lien destroyed by a decree of court in favor of laborers who performed labor for the corporation since his lien attached. The judgment creditor who has procured a judgment and had it regularly docketed, and who is resting securely under the provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure of this state making his judgment a lien upon all the real estate of the judgment debtor, is surprised to find his lien destroyed by a decree in favor of one who has performed labor for the corporation long since his lien attached. The corporation may have delivered a large amount of personal property by way of pledge to secure a loan, and the money may have been used in paying the laborers employed by the corporation, and yet, under this statute, the court must declare the amount due laborers a prior lien as against the pledgee who has actual possession of the property pledged. The statute gives the laborer a right, in case he recovers judgment, to recover attorneys' fees, which become a part of the judgment. No other class of laborers or persons are given the right to recover attorneys' fees except by virtue of a contract or by virtue of a general statute. The corporation is prohibited from setting up any defense to

the action except some two or three. Matters which might be pleaded as a defense by all other persons in the state are not allowed to be so pleaded by the corporation. If the legislature could deprive the corporation of some of the defenses which other litigants on like terms are allowed, it could, by a Draconian edict, deprive it of all of them and say at once that the corporation should make no defense whatever to the action. The corporation and the laborer are prohibited from making any contract whereby wages are to become due for a longer period than one month as a condition of employment, or by which the laborer is to be paid in anything except money or negotiable checks. The working man of intelligence is treated as an imbecile. Being over twenty one years of age, and not a lunatic or insane, he is deprived of the right to make a contract as to the time when his wages shall become due. Being of sound mind and knowing the value of a horse, he is not allowed to make an agreement with the corporation that he will work sixty days and take the horse in payment. Business might be such that a corporation could not possibly pay wages without 12 getting laborers who were willing to wait for their wages until the corporation could get money with which to pay them by marketing its products. The laborer might be interested in the corporation, or for some reason willing to wait until the corporation could pay him. Yet the parties, being able to contract and willing to contract, and desiring for the good of each other to contract, are by this statute forbidden to do so. Not only this, but the corporation shall be subject to a fine of not less than fifty dollars for each violation of the statute. A corporation employing a thousand men and sued by each could not defend the suits without being limited in its defenses to those named in the statute, and being subject to a reasonable attorney's fee in each case. In case it made a contract with the thousand men by which they agreed to work for it three months for one hundred dollars each, they could bring suit and recover before the end of the three months and each recover an attorney's fee, making a thousand attorneys' fees, and the corporation would be subject to one thousand fines of one hundred dollars each, making the modest sum of one hundred thousand dollars in fines, or perhaps the magistrate might in his discretion make the fine fifty dollars in each case and thus reduce it to fifty thousand dollars. We might enumerate many other infirmities in the statute, but the above are sufficient to destroy it. It is probably unnecessary in this opinion to discuss sep

arately the constitutional objections herein briefly pointed out. In Ex parte Kuback, 85 Cal. 275, 20 Am. St. Rep. 226, it appeared that the petitioner had been arrested for the violation of an ordinance of the city of Los Angeles making it a misdemeanor for any contractor to make any agreement to pay any laborer for any labor in excess of eight hours in any one day. This court, in discharging the petitioner, said: "It is claimed in support of the petition that this ordinance was unconstitutional and void. We think this objection is well taken. It is simply an attempt to prevent certain parties from employing others in a lawful business and paying them for their services, and is a direct infringement of the right of such persons to make and enforce their contracts. If the services to be performed were unlawful or against public policy, or the employment were such as might be unfit for certain persons, as, for example, females 13 or infants, the ordinance might be upheld as a sanitary or police regulation, but we cannot conceive of any theory upon which a city could be justified in making it a misdemeanor for one of its citizens to contract with another for services to be rendered because the contract is that he shall work more than a limited number of hours per day." Statutes similar to the one under discussion have been frequently passed by the legislatures of sister states and as frequently declared unconstitutional by the courts. The legislature of Pennsylvania, in June, 1881, passed what was known as the "store order act," and under its provisions all laborers employed by firms, corporations, or persons engaged in the business of manufacturing must be paid in cash and can make no agreement by which their labor shall be paid for in any goods or store orders.

The supreme court of the state in Godcharles v. Wigeman, 113 Pa. St. 437, held the act unconstitutional and in the opinion said: "The first, second, third, and fourth sections of the act of June 29, 1881 are utterly unconstitutional and void, inasmuch as by them an attempt has been made by the legislature to do what in this country cannot be done; that is, to prevent persons who are sui juris from making their own contracts. The act is an infringement alike of the right of the employer and the employé; more than that, it is an insulting attempt to put the laborer under a legislative tutelage which is not only degrading to his manhood but subversive of his rights as a citizen of the United States. He may sell his labor for what he thinks best, whether money or goods, just as his employer may sell his iron or coal, and any and every law that proposes to