the same position, that the section discriminated between the class of laborers engaged in the laundry business and those engaged in other kinds of business; that it discriminated between laborers beyond the designated limits and those within them; that it deprived the petitioner of the right to labor, and, as a necessary consequence, of the right to acquire property; that it was not within the power of the Board of Supervisors of the city and county of San Francisco; and that it was unreasonable in its requirements. The Superior Court overruled the positions and dismissed the writ, and the petitioner brought this writ of error. Mr. A. C. Searle, Mr. H. G. Sieberst, and Mr. Alfred Clarke, for plaintiff in error. No appearance for defendant in error. MR. JUSTICE FIELD delivered the opinion of the court. He recited the facts as above stated, and continued: In this case we can only consider whether the fourth section of the ordinance of the city and county of San Francisco is in conflict with the Constitution or laws of the United States. We cannot pass upon the conformity of that section with the requirements of the Constitution of the State. Our jurisdiction is confined to a consideration of the Federal question involved, which arises upon an allegea conflict of the fourth section in question with the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. No other part of the amendment has any possible application. That fourth section, so far as it is involved in the case before the police judge, was simply a prohibition to carry on the washing and ironing of clothes in public laundries and wash-houses, within certain prescribed limits of the city and county, from ten o'clock at night until six o'clock on the morning of the following day. The prohibition against labor on Sunday is not involved. The provision is purely a police reg ulation within the competency of any municipality possessed of the ordinary powers belonging to such bodies. And it would be an extraordinary usurpation of the authority of a municipality, if a Federal tribunal should undertake to supervise such regulations. It may be a necessary measure of precaution in a city composed largely of wooden buildings like San Francisco, that occupations in which fires are constantly required, should cease after certain hours at night until the following morning; and of the necessity of such regulations the municipal bodies are the exclusive judges; at least any correction of their action in such matters can come only from State legislation or State tribunals. The same municipal authority which directs the cessation of labor must necessarily prescribe the limits within which it shall be enforced, as it does the limits in a city within which wooden buildings cannot be constructed. There is no invidious discrimination against any one within the prescribed limits by such regulations. There is none in the regulation under consideration. The specification of the limits within which the business cannot be carried on without the certificates of the health VOL. I. 40 officer and Board of Fire Wardens is merely a designation of the portion of the city in which the precautionary measures against fire and to secure proper drainage must be taken for the public health and safety. It is not legislation discriminating against any one. All persons engaged in the same business within it are treated alike; are subject to the same restrictions and are entitled to the same privileges under similar conditions. The Fourteenth Amendment, in declaring that no State "shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," undoubtedly intended not only that there should be no arbitrary deprivation of life or liberty, or arbitrary spoliation of property, but that equal protection and security should be given to all under like circumstances in the enjoyment of their personal and civil rights; that all persons should be equally entitled to pursue their happiness and acquire and enjoy property; that they should have like access to the courts of the country for the protection of their persons and property, the prevention and redress of wrongs, and the enforcement of contracts; that no impediment should be interposed to the pursuits of any one except as applied to the same pursuits by others under like circumstances; that no greater burdens should be laid upon one than are laid upon others in the same calling and condition, and that in the administration of criminal justice no different or higher punishment should be imposed upon one than such as is prescribed to all for like offences. But neither the amendment — broad and comprehensive as it is nor any other amendment, was designed to interfere with the power of the State, sometimes termed its police power, to prescribe regulations to promote the health, peace, morals, education, and good order of the people, and to legislate so as to increase the industries of the State, develop its resources, and add to its wealth and prosperity. From the very necessities of society, legislation of a special character, having these objects in view, must often be had in certain districts, such as for draining marshes and irrigating arid plains. Special burdens are often necessary for general benefits for supplying water, preventing fires, lighting districts, cleaning streets, opening parks, and many other objects. Regulations for these purposes may press with more or less weight upon one than upon another, but they are designed, not to impose unequal or unnecessary restrictions upon any one, but to promote, with as little individual inconvenience as possible, the general good. Though, in many respects, necessarily special in their character, they do not furnish just ground of complaint if they operate alike upon all persons and property under the same circumstances and conditions. Class legislation, discriminating against some and favoring others, is prohibited, but legislation which, in carrying out a public purpose, is limited in its application, if within the sphere of its operation it affects alike all persons similarly situated, is not within the amendment. In the execution of admitted powers unnecessary proceedings are often required which are cumbersome, dilatory, and expensive, yet, if no discrimination against any one be made and no substantial right be impaired by them, they are not obnoxious to any constitutional objection. The inconveniencies arising in the administration of the laws from this cause are matters entirely for the consideration of the State; they can be remedied only by the State. In the case before us the provisions requiring certificates from the health officer and the Board of Fire Wardens may, in some instances, be unnecessary, and the changes to be made to meet the conditions prescribed may be burdensome, but, as we have said, this is a matter for the determination of the municipality in the execution of its police powers, and not a violation of any substantial right of the individual. Judgment affirmed.1 IN THE MATTER OF THE APPLICATION OF JACOBS. [98 N. Y. 98.] Peter B. Olney, District Attorney, for appellant. Wm. M. Evarts, A. J. Dittenhoeffer, and Morris S. Wise, for respondent. EARL, J. The relator Jacobs was arrested on the 14th day of May, 1884, on a warrant issued by a police justice in the city of New York under the Act chapter 272 of the Laws of 1884, passed May 12, entitled "An Act to improve the Public Health by prohibiting the Manufacture of Cigars and Preparation of Tobacco in any form in Tenement-houses in certain Cases, and regulating the Use of Tenement-houses in certain Cases." On the evidence of the complainant he was by the justice committed for trial, and thereafter upon his petition, a justice of the Supreme Court granted a writ of habeas corpus, to which a return was made, and upon the hearing thereon the justice made an order dismissing the writ and remanding him to prison. From that order he appealed to the General Term of the Supreme Court, which reversed the order and discharged him from prison, on the ground that the Act under which he was arrested was unconstitutional and therefore void. The district attorney on behalf of the people then appealed to this court, and the sole question for our determination is, whether the Act of 1884 creating the offence for which the relator was arrested was a constitutional exercise of legislative power. The facts as they appeared before the police justice were as follows: The relator at the time of his arrest lived with his wife and two children in a tenement-house in the city of New York in which three other families also lived. There were four floors in the house, and seven rooms on each floor, and each floor was occupied by one family living 1 And so Soon Hing v. Crowley, 113 U. S. 703.- ED. independently of the others, and doing their cooking in one of the rooms so occupied. The relator at the time of his arrest was engaged in one of his rooms in preparing tobacco and making cigars, but there was no smell of tobacco in any part of the house except the room where he was thus engaged. These facts showed a violation of the provisions of the Act which took effect immediately upon its passage and the material portions of which are as follows: "Section 1. The manufacture of cigars or preparation of tobacco in any form on any floor, or in any part of any floor, in any tenement-house is hereby prohibited, if such floor or any part of such floor is by any person occupied as a home or residence for the purpose of living, sleeping, cooking, or doing any household work therein. Section 2. Any house, building, or portion thereof occupied as the home or residence of more than three families living independently of one another, and doing their cooking upon the premises, is a tenement-house within the meaning of this Act. Section 3. The first floor of said tenement-house on which there is a store for the sale of cigars and tobacco shall be exempt from the prohibition provided in section one of this Act. Section 5. Every person who shall be found guilty of a violation of this Act, or of having caused another to commit such violation, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be punished for every offence by a fine of not less than ten dollars and not more than one hundred dollars or by imprisonment for not less than ten days and not more than six months, or both such fine and imprisonment. Section 6. This Act shall apply only to cities having over five hundred thousand inhabitants." What does this Act attempt to do? In form, it makes it a crime for a cigar-maker in New York and Brooklyn, the only cities in the State having a population exceeding 500,000, to carry on a perfectly lawful trade in his own home. Whether he owns the tenement-house or has hired a room therein for the purpose of prosecuting his trade, he cannot manufacture therein his own tobacco into cigars for his own use or for sale, and he will become a criminal for doing that which is perfectly lawful outside of the two cities named-everywhere else, so far as we are able to learn, in the whole world. He must either abandon the trade by which he earns a livelihood for himself and family, or, if able, procure a room elsewhere, or hire himself out to one who has a room upon such terms as, under the fierce competition of trade and the inexorable laws of supply and demand, he may be able to obtain from his employer. He may choose to do his work where he can have the supervision of his family and their help, and such choice is denied him. He may choose to work for himself rather than for a taskmaster, and he is left without freedom of choice. He may desire the advantage of cheap production in consequence of his cheap rent and family help, and of this he is deprived. In the unceasing struggle for success and existence which pervades all societies of men, he may be deprived of that which will enable him to maintain his hold, and to survive. He may go to a tenement house, and finding no one living, sleeping, cooking, or doing any household work upon one of the floors, hire a room upon such floor to carry on his trade, and afterward some one may commence to sleep or to do some household work upon such floor, even without his knowledge, and he at once becomes a criminal in consequence of another's act. He may go to a tenement-house, and finding but two families living therein independently, hire a room, and afterward by subdivision of the families, or a change in their mode of life, or in some other way, a fourth family begins to live therein independently, and thus he may become a criminal without the knowledge, or possibly the means of knowledge that he was violating any law. It is, therefore, plain that this law interferes with the profitable and free use of his property by the owner or lessee of a tenement-house who is a cigar-maker, and trammels him in the application of his industry and the disposition of his labor, and thus, in a strictly legitimate sense, it arbitrarily deprives him of his property and of some portion of his personal liberty. The constitutional guarantee that no person shall be deprived of his property without due process of law may be violated without the physical taking of property for public or private use. Property may be destroyed, or its value may be annihilated; it is owned and kept for some useful purpose and it has no value unless it can be used. Its capability for enjoyment and adaptability to some use are essential characteristics and attributes without which property cannot be conceived; and hence any law which destroys it or its value, or takes away any of its essential attributes, deprives the owner of his property. The constitutional guarantee would be of little worth, if the legislature could, without compensation, destroy property or its value, deprive the owner of its use, deny him the right to live in his own house, or to work at any lawful trade therein. If the legislature has the power under the Constitution to prohibit the prosecution of one lawful trade in a tenement-house, then it may prevent the prosecution of all trades therein."Questions of power," says Chief Justice Marshall in Brown v. State of Maryland, 12 Wheat. 419, "do not depend upon the degree to which it may be exercised. If it may be exercised at all it must be exercised at the will of those in whose hands it is placed." Blackstone in his classification of fundamental rights says: "The third absolute right inherent in every Englishman is that of property which consists in the free use, enjoyment, and disposal of all his acquisitions without any control or diminution, save only by the law of the land." 1 Com. 138. In Pumpelly v. Green Bay Co., 13 Wall. 166, 177, Miller, J., says: "There may be such serious interruption to the common and necessary use of property as will be equivalent to a taking within the meaning of the Constitution." In Wynehamer v. People, 13 N. Y. 378, 398, Comstock, J., says: "When a law annihilates the value of property and strips it of its attributes, by which alone it is distinguished as property, the owner is deprived of it according to the plainest interpretation, and certainly within the constitutional provision |