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Clause 66 of Section 1, Article V, of the Cities and Villages Act confers upon municipalities the power:

"To regulate the police of the city or village and pass and enforce all necessary police ordinances."

At an early date, the Supreme Court held that Clause 66 is not limited in its application "to the organization and regulation of a police force," but "may extend to and embrace a subject matter of police regulation, under the general police power of the state" (McPherson v. Village of Chebanse, 1885, 114 Ill. 46).

On the other hand, it was definitely held by the Supreme Court that Clause 66 did not delegate to municipalities the entire police power of the state. In such cases as City of Marengo v. Rowland (1914) 263 Ill. 531, and City of Springfield v. Richter (1913) 257 Ill. 578, it became apparent that the police power was, generally speaking, confined within the general scope of municipal functions and the subjects enumerated in their charters. The law on the subject was admirably epitomized in the following portion of the opinion in the case of Stoessand v. Frank (1918) 283 Ill. 271:

"By the Cities and Villages Act power is granted to legislate on certain enumerated subjects, and. the sixty-sixth clause is a general authority to exercise the police power concerning the enumerated subjects and none other (City of Chicago v. M. & M. Hotel Co. 248 Ill. 264). The general grant enables the municipality to make and enforce all reasonable police regulations which come within the range of the subjects over which the city has control (City of Chicago v. Kluever 257 Ill. 317), and the cases in which ordinances have been sustained have been those referable to express powers."

See also City of Marion v. Criolo (1917) 278 Ill. 179, City of Chicago v. O'Brien (1915) 268 Ill. 228, City of Chicago v. Mandel Bros. (1914) 264 Ill. 206, City of Clinton v. Wilson (1913) 257 Ill. 580, Biffer v. City of Chicago (1917) 278 Ill. 562, Spiegler v. City of Chicago (1905) 216 III. 114, City of Chicago v. Gunning System (1905) 214 Ill. 628, Gundling v. City of Chicago (1898) 176 Ill. 340.

The case under discussion, if it raised any question of police power at all, furnished a fitting occasion for the discussion and application of the foregoing principles. Several of the powers enumerated in Section 1 of Article V of the Cities and Villages Act have to do with the subject-matter of the ordinances attacked by the county; among such powers the Supreme Court particularly mentions clauses 61, 62 and 63. It is, of course, well settled that the power to enact an ordinance need not be derived from a single item of the enumeration of powers, but may be derived from several items considered together (Williams v. City of Chicago (1915) 266 Ill. 267). Such clauses as 61, 62 and 63 would seem amply sufficient to authorize the ordinances in question, when considered together with Clause 66.

Curiously, however, the Supreme Court does not mention Clause 66 in the entire opinion. Although its prior decisions, such

as Stoessand v. Frank, supra, seem to regard Clause 66 as the source of, and authority for, the police power delegated to cities and villages, the Supreme Court discusses the question as if there were police powers vested in municipalities independently of Clause 66, by other of the powers enumerated in Article V of the Cities and Villages Act. The Illinois cases relied upon by the Supreme Court are only the following: Chicago Packing Co. v. City of Chicago 88 Ill. 221, King v. Davenport 98 Ill. 305 and Village of Louisville v. Webster 108 Ill. 414, in none of which is the general question of the police power of municipalities directly or adequately discussed.

The real question in the principal case, after all, was whether a county is subject to such exercises of power by a city. The question was not so much a question of police power as of the conflicting rights of the two types of organization, city and county. The power of cities and villages to enact reasonable fire and building ordinances can hardly be seriously questioned. In this case the power delegated to the city was properly construed, as between the county and the city, as a delegation of a power to the latter which the former is expected to observe.

L. G. C.

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW-INTERSTATE COMMERCE-PROTECTION OF GAME AND ALLIGATORS.-In the case of LaCoste v. Department of Conservation 44 S. C. R. 186, in an opinion by Mr. Justice Butler, the Supreme Court of the United States sustained the validity of an act of the State of Louisiana which imposed a severance tax of two cents on the dollar on and of the value of all skins or hides taken from any wild fur-bearing animals or alligators within the state, and which tax was to be collected from the dealer and after the severance, the dealer being defined to be "one who buys skins or hides from either a trapper or a buyer and ships them from the state or sells them for manufacture into a finished product in the state."

Since the tax was levied on all skins alike, and in the hands of all dealers, and equally whether the skins were designed for transportation outside of the state in their natural condition or to be manufactured into finished products within its borders, the court properly held that there was and could be no interference with the interstate commerce clause of the constitution; and it no doubt properly held that collecting the tax while the skins and hides were in the hands of the dealers, instead of when they were in the hands of the hunters or trappers, was merely a matter of detail and a regulation of convenience which could well be justified. When, however, we come to the discussion of the application of the Fourteenth Amendment, though we are satisfied with the conclusion that the amendment does not and cannot apply, we might perhaps have been better satisfied if the court had really distinguished and had not jumbled the cases which relate to the so-called police power with those which relate to the inherent power of taxation.

We presume that the court held, and this no doubt correctly, that the charge could be upheld either as a tax and as a revenue measure or as an exercise of the so-called police power which would tend to the conservation of the wild life of the state.

Throughout the opinion, however, it seems to take the position that the game and wild animals of a state are "owned by the state in its sovereign capacity for the common benefit of all of its people." This is not the law. At no time did the game belong to the state. Surely a state could not send its agents upon the private lands of its citizens and catch or shoot all the game thereon, and then sell or use that game even for public purposes. There is certainly no warrant for Justice Butler's statement or force in his argument that "It is within the power of the state to impose the exaction as a condition precedent to the divestiture of its title and to the acquisition of private ownership."

At the most the game is held in trust, or rather the protection of the rights of all is a matter of trust, and though the state may regulate the hunting and the catching so that the supply may not be exhausted and the rights of all may be protected; when that game is caught or shot it belongs to the hunter and not to the state. It is much like the ice upon the meandered lakes which the state may not sell, and an export tax on which the state may not impose. Once being cut by the individual it is private property and export taxes on private property are prohibited by the federal Constitution: Rosmiller v. State (Wis.) 89 N. W. 838; and, if the tax be looked upon as the selling price of the state to the cutter or ice merchant, it would be equally invalid, since the state cannot sell to one of its citizens that which the citizen already owns, nor barter and sell to outsiders that which its citizens and not itself owns.

Classification, however, is not prohibited by the federal Constitution, and many states allow a great latitude in the matter. There is nothing out of the way in imposing a tax upon game or hides or ice, after the articles have come into the hands of a citizen, nor is it more unusual than is the imposing of one upon the automobile which he happens to have purchased. Nor, too, is there anything unusual in imposing a tax or fee whose purpose is to limit the destruction of the common property of all, provided that such tax or fee is imposed upon all of the takers or users of that property alike.

Since, indeed, the one important question whether a state may prohibit in part or altogether the exportation of its natural products which scarcity or other causes have made necessary to its welfare and its development is purposely ignored and is no doubt not necessary to the decision, the case presents nothing that is really new, and by its assertion of the state's title tends to obscure rather than to elucidate. From a sentimental standpoint, however, it is interesting. The humble alligator has at last come into his own. Years ago a prominent Louisiana lawyer and member of the National Commission on Uniform State Laws, T. S. Wall of Baton Rouge, used to electrify but at the same time amuse his audiences by pleading the cause of this humble saurian, and even today the writer can

remember his eloquent perorations which he was ever ready to repeat. Now not only is the alligator protected but a price is put upon the head of him who severs his hide. For years the voice of Wall was a voice crying in an alligator swamp. Now it has found favor in the Supreme Court of the United States.

A. A. B.

ΤΟ AN

EVIDENCE-CRIMINAL CASES-CROSS-EXAMINATION ARREST.-In People v. Decker 310 Ill. 234, 141 N. E. 710 (Dec. 19, 1923), the Supreme Court had occasion to repeat the ruling of People v. Newman (1913) 261 Ill. 11, 103 N. E. 589 (not cited, however, in the opinion), viz., that a witness's moral character cannot be impeached by asking as to a former arrest. In the present case, the questions of that tenor, put by the State's attorney, were the more objectionable in that the witness was the accused, and that the question ran, "You have been in trouble of this kind [chicken-stealing] before, haven't you?" This improper examination was treated as ground for reversal, though the trial court had sustained objection to the question.

Cannot State's attorneys be expected to know and to remember the elementary rules of evidence obtaining in the forum where they practice? So long as prosecuting attorneys act with unrestrained aggressiveness and untrained ignorance, it is difficult for the legislators to contemplate a reform of those excessive safeguards which now license the guilty as well as protect the innocent.

J. H. W.

PROPRIETARY RIGHTS IN ILLINOIS LANDS UNDERLYING LAKES. -In Wilkinson v. Watts 309 Ill. 607 appears the statement: the general rule is that where land is conveyed on a natural navigable lake [the italics are supplied] the land conveyed extends only to the water's edge and not to the middle thereof." Attention is called to the portion of this language thus italicized because it carries the suggestion of a different rule if the lake were something other than a natural navigable one. If it was intended to make such an implication by this language, it is submitted the language is misleading, for the language contemplates a departure in the case of lakes from the rule applicable to streams, whereby a grant of land as bordering on a stream extends to the middle of the stream. It is submitted that in the Illinois law, regardless of what the law outside of the state may be, no authorities appear which hold that a grant of land expressed as bordering on a lake, be it navigable or non-navigable, ever extends, by construction or otherwise, beyond the water's edge. Be the reason for this that because the shore of the lake is so irregular there is a practical difficulty in the way of permitting the same rule to obtain that obtains in the case of streams, or be it that if the lake was meandered the United States thereby fixed a line beyond which the grant did not go, and if not meandered, then the lines of the survey would run right through the lake just as if there were no lake there, the fact remains that in Illinois,

if it is a lake, then unless the grant in terms conveyed the bed of the lake, no title to the lake's bed would pass (ILL. L. REV. XI 556 et seq.).

E. M. L.

EVIDENCE-ATTESTING WITNESS-IMPEACHMENT BY SELFCONTRADICTION.-Where a witness is to be discredited by a selfcontradictory statement made out of court, he must first be warned by a question reciting the time, place, and person. This a rule of fairness, designed to give the witness an opportunity of explanation. But if the witness is deceased at the time of trial, and his deposition is offered, and now it is impracticable to put the warning question, will this permit the proof of the self-contradiction? As applied to the case of a will-witness's attestation, the jurisdictions are divided in answering this question (Wigmore on Evidence, § 1033). Illinois has never had occasion to answer it until now. In Craig v. Wismar 310 Ill. 262, 141 N. E. 766 (Dec. 19, 1923), it is answered in the negative, after full consideration of the authorities. This is the illiberal view. The rules of Evidence need loosening up, not tightening.

J. H. W.

WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION-ARISING OUT OF EMPLOYMENT. -Apropos of the comment in the December number of this REVIEW (XVIII 254-257), reference is had to the case of Boorde v. Industrial Com. 310 Ill. 62. There a telephone girl, during her rest period, assumed a position on the ledge of a window, opposite to the elevator, from which position she fell to the bottom of the elevator shaft and sustained injuries of which she died. The court denied any recovery under the Workmen's Compensation Act because, the court says, the girl was not killed in an accident arising out of her employment. The court cites a case where an employee assumed a dangerous position during a period of idleness in his work, another where the injury was received in a personal encounter between two employees not because of the employer's business, another case where the employee had ceased work for the day and was on his way home and another where the employee put his hand into a dangerous place in machinery to recover a piece of metal so that he might augment his credit for the piece work he was doing and thus increase his pay. No other cases were cited, and, it must be conceded, the case of Weis Paper Co. v. Indus. Com. 293 Ill. 384, one of the four cited, the one where the workman assumed a dangerous position during the period of idleness in his work, is very much in point.

However, there are two other cases that seem to bear inspection in this connection. They are Savoy Hotel Co. v. Indus. Board 279 Ill. 329 and Humphrey v. Indus. Com. 285 Ill. 372. In the former of these a negro porter, who had been observed to be in an intoxicated condition, was found with his neck broken and in a sitting posture in the corner of a freight elevator in the hotel where

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