An Act of the General Assembly of Illinois approved March 8,
1867, incorporating the Northwestern Fertilizing Company, with
continued succession and existence for the term of fifty years,
authorized and empowered it to establish and maintain in Cook
County, Illinois, at any point south of the dividing line between
Townships 37 and 38, chemical and other works,
"for the purpose of manufacturing and converting dead animals
and other animal matter into an agricultural fertilizer and into
other chemical products, by means of chemical, mechanical, and
other processes,"
and to establish and maintain depots in the City of Chicago, in
said county,
"for the purpose of receiving and carrying off from and out of
said city any and all offal, dead animals, and other animal matter
which it might buy or own, or which might be delivered to it by the
city authorities and other persons."
The works, owned by the proprietors thereof before they were
incorporated, were located within the designated territory at a
place then swampy and nearly uninhabited, but now forming a part of
the Village of Hyde Park, and the company established and
maintained depots in Chicago. In March, 1869, the legislature
passed an act revising the charter of that village and granting to
it the largest powers of police and local government -- among them
to "define or abate nuisances which are, or may be, injurious to
the public health," provided that the sanitary and police powers
thereby conferred should not be exercised against the Northwestern
Fertilizing Company in said village until the full expiration of
two years from and after the passage of said act. Nov. 29, 1872,
the village authorities adopted the following ordinance:
"No person shall transfer, carry, haul, or convey any offal,
dead animals, or other offensive or unwholesome matter or material
into or through the Village of Hyde Park. Any person who shall be
in charge of or employed upon any train or team carrying or
conveying such matter or material into or through the Village of
Hyde Park shall be subject to a fine of not less than five nor more
than fifty dollars for each offense,"
and, Jan. 5,1873, caused the engineer and other employee of a
railway company, which was engaged in carrying the offal from the
city through the village to the chemical works to be arrested
Page 97 U. S. 660
and tried for violating the ordinance. They were convicted and
fined fifty dollars each, whereupon the company filed this bill to
restrain further prosecutions and for general relief.
Held:
1. That nothing passed by the charter of the company but what
was granted in express terms or by necessary intendment.
2. That the charter, although, until revoked, a sufficient
license, was not a contract guaranteeing that the company,
notwithstanding its business might become a nuisance by reason of
the growth of population around the place originally selected for
its works, should for fifty years be exempt from the exercise of
the police power of the State.
3. That the charter affords the company no protection from the
enforcement of the ordinance.
The Northwestern Fertilizing Company, a corporation created by
an Act of the Legislature of Illinois approved March 8, 1867, filed
its bill in equity to restrain the Village of Hyde Park, in Cook
County, Illinois, from enforcing the provisions of an ordinance of
that village which the company claims impairs the obligation of its
charter. The bill also prayed for general relief. The supreme court
of that state affirmed the decree of the Circuit Court of Cook
County dismissing the bill, whereupon the company sued out this
writ of error.
The charter of the company and the ordinance complained of are,
with the facts which gave rise to the suit, set forth in the
opinion of the Court.
Page 97 U. S. 663
MR. JUSTICE SWAYNE delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case was brought here by a writ of error to the Supreme
Court of the State of Illinois.
The alleged ground of our jurisdiction is that the record
presents a question of federal jurisprudence. A brief statement of
the facts will be sufficient for the purposes of this opinion.
The plaintiff in error was incorporated by an Act of the
legislature approved March 8, 1867. The act declared that the
corporation should "have continued succession and existence for the
term of fifty years." The fourth and fifth sections are as
follows:
"SEC. 4. Said corporation is hereby authorized and empowered to
establish and maintain chemical and other works at the place
designated herein for the purpose of manufacturing and converting
dead animals and other animal matter into an agricultural
fertilizer, and into other chemical products by means of chemical,
mechanical, and other processes."
"SEC. 5. Said chemical works shall be established in Cook
County, Illinois, at any point south of the dividing line between
Townships 37 and 38. Said corporation may establish and maintain
depots in the City of Chicago in said county for the purpose of
receiving and carrying off from and out of the said city any and
all offal, dead animals, and other animal matter, which they may
buy or own or which may be delivered to them by the city
authorities and other persons."
The company organized pursuant to the charter. Its capital stock
is $250,000, all of which has been paid up and invested in its
business.
Page 97 U. S. 664
It owns ground and has its receiving depot about three miles
from Chicago. The cost of both exceeded $15,000. Thither the offal
arising from the slaughtering in the city was conveyed daily. The
chemical works of the company are in Cook County, south of the
dividing line of Townships 37 and 38, as required by the charter.
When put there, the country around was swampy and nearly
uninhabited, giving little promise of further improvement. They are
within the present limits of the Village of Hyde Park. The offal
procured by the company was transported from Chicago to its works
through the village by the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne, and Chicago
Railroad. There was no other railroad by which it could be done.
The court below, in its opinion, said:
"An examination of the evidence in this case clearly shows that
this factory was an unendurable nuisance to the inhabitants for
many miles around its location; that the stench was intolerable,
producing nausea, discomfort, if not sickness, to the people; that
it depreciated the value of property, and was a source of immense
annoyance. It is perhaps as great a nuisance as could be found or
even created -- not affecting as many persons as if located in or
nearer to the city, but as intense in its noisome effects as could
be produced. And the transportation of this putrid animal matter
through the streets of the village, as we infer from the evidence,
was offensive in a high degree both to sight and smell."
This characterization is fully sustained by the testimony.
In March, 1869, the charter of the village was revised by the
legislature, and the largest powers of police and local government
were conferred. The trustees were expressly authorized to "define
or abate nuisances which are or may be injurious to the public
health" -- to compel the owner of any grocery cellar, tallow
chandler shop, soap factory, tannery, or other unwholesome place to
cleanse or abate such place as might be necessary and to regulate,
prohibit, or license breweries, tanneries, packing houses, butcher
shops, stock yards, or establishments for steaming and rendering
lard, tallow offal, or other substances, and all establishments and
places where any nauseous, offensive, or unwholesome business was
carried on. The sixteenth section contains a proviso that the
powers given
Page 97 U. S. 665
should not be exercised against the Northwestern Fertilizing
Company until after two years from the passage of the act. This
limitation was evidently a compromise by conflicting parties.
On the 5th of March, 1867, a prior act, giving substantially the
same powers to the village, was approved and became a law. This act
provided that nothing contained in it should be construed to
authorize the officers of the village to interfere with parties
engaged in transporting any animal matter from Chicago or from
manufacturing it into a fertilizer or other chemical product. The
works here in question were in existence and in operation where
they now are before the proprietors were incorporated.
After the last revision of the charter, the municipality passed
an ordinance whereby, among other things, it was declared that no
person should transport any offal or other offensive or unwholesome
matter through the village and that any person employed upon any
train or team conveying such matter should be liable to a fine of
not less than five nor more than fifty dollars for each offense,
and that no person should maintain or carry on any offensive or
unwholesome business or establishment within the limits of the
village nor within one mile of those limits. Any person violating
either of these provisions was subjected to a penalty of not less
than fifty nor more than two hundred dollars for each offense, and
to a like fine for each day the establishment or business should be
continued after the first conviction.
After the adoption of this ordinance and the expiration of two
years from the passage of the act of 1869, notice was given to the
company that if it continued to transport offal through the village
as before, the ordinance would be enforced. This having no effect,
thereafter, on the 8th of January, 1873, the village authorities
caused the engineer and other employees of the railway company who
were engaged in carrying the offal through the village to be
arrested and tried for violating the ordinance. They were convicted
and fined each fifty dollars. This bill was thereupon filed by the
company. It prays that further prosecutions may be enjoined and for
general relief. The supreme court of the state, upon
Page 97 U. S. 666
appeal, dismissed the bill, and the company sued out this writ
of error.
The plaintiff in error claims that it is protected by its
charter from the enforcement against it of the ordinances
complained of, and that its charter is a contract within the
meaning of the contract clause of the Constitution of the United
states. Whether this is so is the question to be considered.
The rule of construction in this class of cases is that it shall
be most strongly against the corporation. Every reasonable doubt is
to be resolved adversely. Nothing is to be taken as conceded but
what is given in unmistakable terms or by an implication equally
clear. The affirmative must be shown. Silence is negation, and
doubt is fatal to the claim. This doctrine is vital to the public
welfare. It is axiomatic in the jurisprudence of this Court. It may
be well to cite a few cases by way of illustration. In
Rector of Christ Church v.
The County of Philadelphia, 24 How. 301, in
Tucker v.
Ferguson, 22 Wall. 527, and in
West Wisconsin
Railroad Co. v. Board of Supervisors, 96 U. S.
595, property had been expressly exempted for a time
from taxation. Taxes were imposed contrary to the terms of the
exemption in each case. The corporations objected. This Court held
that the promised forbearance was only a bounty or gratuity, and
that there was no contract. In
Providence Bank v.
Billings & Pittman, 4 Pet. 515, the bank had
been incorporated with the powers usually given to such
institutions. The charter was silent as to taxation. The
legislature imposed taxes. "The power to tax involves the power to
destroy."
McCulloch v.
Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316. The bank resisted, and
brought the case here for final determination. This Court held that
there was no immunity, and that the bank was liable for the taxes
as an individual would have been. There is the same silence in the
charter here in question as to taxation and as to liability for
nuisances. Can exemption be claimed as to one more than the other?
Is not the case just cited conclusive as to both?
Continued succession is given to corporations to prevent
embarrassment arising from the death of their members. One striking
difference between the artificial and a natural person
Page 97 U. S. 667
is that the latter can do anything not forbidden by law, while
the former can do only what is so permitted. Its powers and
immunities depend primarily upon the law of its creation. Beyond
that, it is subject, like individuals, to the will of the lawmaking
power.
If the intent of the legislature touching the point under
consideration be sought in the charter and its history, it will be
found to be in accordance with the view we have expressed as matter
of law. Three days before the charter of the plaintiff in error
became a law, the legislature declared that the power of the
village as to nuisances should not extend to those engaged in the
business to which the charter relates. The subject must have been
fully present to the legislative mind when the company's charter
was passed. If it were intended the exemption should be inviolable,
why was it not put in the company's charter as well as in that of
the village? The silence of the former, under the circumstances, is
a pregnant fact. In one case, it was doubtless known to all
concerned that the restriction would be irrepealable, while in the
other, that it could be revoked at any time. In the revised village
charter of 1869, the exemption was limited to two years from the
passage of the act. This was equivalent to a declaration that after
the lapse of the two years, the full power of the village might be
applied to the extent found necessary. Corporations in such cases
are usually prolific of promises, and the legislature was willing
to await the event for the time named.
That a nuisance of a flagrant character existed, as found by the
court below, is not controverted. We cannot doubt that the police
power of the state was applicable and adequate to give an effectual
remedy. That power belonged to the states when the federal
Constitution was adopted. They did not surrender it, and they all
have it now. It extends to the entire property and business within
their local jurisdiction. Both are subject to it in all proper
cases. It rests upon the fundamental principle that everyone shall
so use his own as not to wrong and injure another. To regulate and
abate nuisances is one of its ordinary functions. The adjudged
cases showing its exercise where corporate franchises were involved
are numerous.
Page 97 U. S. 668
In
Coates v. Mayor and Aldermen of City of New York, 7
Cow. (N.Y.) 585, a law was enacted by the legislature of the state
on the 9th of March, 1813, which gave to the city government power
to pass ordinances regulating and, if necessary, preventing the
interment of dead bodies within the city, and a penalty of $250 was
authorized to be imposed for the violation of the prohibition. On
the 7th of October, 1823, an ordinance was adopted forbidding
interments or the depositing of dead bodies in vaults in the city
south of a designated line. A penalty was prescribed for its
violation. The action was brought to recover the penalty for
depositing a dead body in a vault in Trinity Churchyard. A plea was
interposed setting forth that the
locus in quo was granted
by the King of Great Britain on the 6th of May, 1697, to a
corporation by the name of the "Rector and Inhabitants of the City
of New York in Communion with the Protestant, Episcopal Church of
England" and their successors forever as and for a churchyard and
burying place, with the rights, fees, &c.; that immediately
after the grant, the land was appropriated, and thenceforward was
used as and for a cemetery for the interment of dead bodies; that
the rector and wardens of Trinity Church were the same corporation;
and that the body in question was deposited in the vault in the
churchyard by the license of that corporation. A general demurrer
was filed, and the case elaborately argued.
The validity of the ordinance was sustained. The court held
that
"The act under which it was passed was not unconstitutional
either as impairing the obligation of contracts or taking property
for public use without compensation, but stands on the police power
to make regulations in respect to nuisances."
It was said:
"Every right, from absolute ownership in property down to a mere
easement, is purchased and holden subject to the restriction that
it shall be so exercised as not to injure others. Though at the
time it be remote and inoffensive, the purchaser is bound to know
at his peril that it may become otherwise by the residence of many
people in its vicinity, and that it must yield to by laws and other
regular remedies for the suppression of nuisances."
In such cases, proscription, whatever the length of time,
has
Page 97 U. S. 669
no application. Every day's continuance is a new offense, and it
is no justification that the party complaining came voluntarily
within its reach. Pure air and the comfortable enjoyment of
property are as much rights belonging to its as the right of
possession and occupancy. If population where there was none before
approaches a nuisance, it is the duty of those liable at once to
put an end to it.
Brady v. Weeks, 3 Barb. (N.Y.) 157.
The Legislature of Massachusetts, on the 1st of February, 1827,
incorporated the "Boston Beer Company," "for the purpose of
manufacturing malt liquors in all their varieties in the City of
Boston," &c. By an Act of June, 1869, the manufacture of malt
liquors to be sold in Massachusetts, and brewing and keeping them
for sale, were prohibited under penalties of fine and imprisonment
and the forfeiture of the liquors to the Commonwealth. In
Beer
Company v. The Commonwealth, the Supreme Court of
Massachusetts held that
"The act of 1869 does not impair the obligations of the contract
contained in the charter of the claimant so far as it relates to
the sale of malt liquors, but is binding on the claimant to the
same extent as on individuals."
"The act is in the nature of a police regulation in regard to
the sale of a certain article of property, and is applicable to the
sale of such property by individual and corporations, even where
the charter of the corporation cannot be altered or repealed by the
legislature."
This Court unanimously affirmed that judgment. In our opinion,
MR. JUSTICE BRADLEY, speaking for the Court, said:
"Whatever differences of opinion may exist as to the extent and
boundaries of the police power and however difficult it may be to
render a satisfactory definition of it, there seems to be no doubt
that it does extend to the protection of the lives, health, and
property of the citizens and to the preservation of good order and
the public morals."
The judgment here was placed also upon another ground.
Beer
Company v. Massachusetts, supra, p.
97
U. S. 25.
Perhaps the most striking application of the police power is in
the destruction of buildings to prevent the spread of a
conflagration. This right existed by the common law, and the
Page 97 U. S. 670
owner was entitled to no compensation. 2 Kent, Com. 339, and
notes 1 and
a and
b. In some of the states it is
regulated by statute.
Russel v. Mayor of New York, 2 Den.
(N.Y.) 461;
American Print Works v. Lawrence, 23 N.J.L.
590.
In the case before us, it does not appear that the factory could
not be removed to some other place south of the designated line
where it could be operated and where offal could be conveyed to it
from the city by some other railroad, both without rightful
objection. The company had the choice of any point within the
designated limits. In that respect there is no restriction.
The charter was a sufficient license until revoked, but we
cannot regard it as a contract guaranteeing, in the locality
originally selected, exemption for fifty years from the exercise of
the police power of the state, however serious the nuisance might
become in the future by reason of the growth of population around
it. The owners had no such exemption before they were incorporated,
and we think the charter did not give it to them.
There is a class of nuisances designated "legalized." These are
cases which rest for their sanction upon the intent of the law
under which they are created, the paramount power of the
legislature, the principle of "the greatest good of the greatest
number," and the importance of the public benefit and convenience
involved in their continuance. The topic is fully discussed in Wood
on Nuisances, c. 23, p. 781.
See also 4 Waite, Actions and
Defenses 728. This case is not within that category. We need not
therefore consider the subject in this opinion.
Decree affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE FIELD did not sit in this case, nor take any part in
its decision.
MR. JUSTICE MILLER concurred in the judgment; MR. JUSTICE STRONG
dissented.
MR. JUSTICE MILLER.
I concur in the judgment of the Court, but cannot agree to the
principal argument by which it
Page 97 U. S. 671
is supported in the opinion. As the question turns upon the
existence of a contract and its nature, and not upon the power of
the legislature to pass laws affecting the health and comfort of
the community, a reference to them and to the power to repeal and
modify them, where no contract is in question, is irrelevant. It is
said that such contract as may be found in the present case was
made subject to the police power of the legislature over the class
of subjects to which it relates. The extent to which this is true
depends upon the specific character of the contract, and not upon
the general doctrine. This Court has repeatedly decided that a
state may by contract bargain away her right of taxation. I have
not concurred in that view, but it is the settled law of this
Court. If a state may make a contract on that subject which it
cannot abrogate or repeal, it may with far more reason make a
contract for a limited time for the removal of a continuing
nuisance from a populous city.
The nuisance in the case before us was the very subject matter
of the contract. The consideration of the contract was that the
company might and should do certain things which affected the
health and comfort of the community, and the state can no more
impair the obligation of that contract than it can resume the right
of taxation which it has on valid consideration agreed not to
exercise because in either case the wisdom of its legislation has
become doubtful.
If the good of the entire community requires the destruction of
the company's rights under this contract, let the entire community
pay therefore by condemning the same for public use.
But I agree that contracts like this must be clearly
established, and the powers of the legislature can only be limited
by the express terms of the contract or by what is necessarily
implied. In the case before us, the company has two correlative
rights in regard to the offal at the slaughter houses in Chicago.
One is to have within the limit of that city depots for receiving
it, and the other is to carry it to a place in Cook County south of
the dividing line between Townships 37 and 38. The city or the
state legislature is not forbidden by the contract to locate such
depots within the city where the health of
Page 97 U. S. 672
the city requires -- in other words, the company has not the
choice of location within the city. So in regard to the chemical
works. The company, by its contract, is entitled to have them in
Cook County south of the line mentioned, but the precise locality
within that large space is a fair subject of regulation by the
police power of the state or of any town to which it has been
delegated. If within the limits of Hyde Park that town may pass
such laws concerning its health and comfort as may require the
company to seek another location south of the designated line
without impairing the terms of the contract.
It is said that the only railroad by which the company can carry
offal passes through Hyde Park, and that the ordinance is fatal to
the use of the road. But the state did not contract that the
company might carry by railroad, still less by that road. In short,
in my opinion, there is within the limits of the original
designation of boundary ample space where the company may exercise
the power granted by the contract without violating the ordinances
of Hyde Park, and they, as a police regulation of health and
comfort, are therefore valid as not infringing that contract.
For this reason alone I think the decree should be affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE STRONG.
I cannot concur in the judgment directed by the Court in this
case. That the charter granted by the legislature March 8, 1867,
and accepted by the company, is a contract protected by the
Constitution of the United states, cannot be denied in the face of
Dartmouth College v.
Woodward, 4 Wheat. 518, and the long line of
decisions that have followed in its wake and reasserted its
doctrines. And if the company holds its rights under and by force
of the contract, those rights cannot be taken away or impaired
either directly or indirectly by any subsequent legislation. This I
believe to be incontrovertible, though the opinion just delivered
may seem to express a doubt of it.
What, then, was the contract created by the charter and its
acceptance? The first, second, and third sections constituted
certain persons named, and their successors, associates, and
assigns, a body politic and corporate, to have continued
succession
Page 97 U. S. 673
and existence for the term of fifty years, and declared that its
capital stock should be $50,000, but gave the company power to
increase the same to any sum not exceeding $250,000.
The fourth and fifth sections are as follows:
"SEC. 4. Said corporation is hereby authorized and empowered to
establish and maintain chemical and other works at the place
designated herein for the purpose of manufacturing and converting
dead animals and other animal matter into an agricultural
fertilizer and into other chemical products by means of chemical,
mechanical, and other processes."
"SEC. 5. Said chemical works shall be established in Cook
County, Illinois, at any point south of the dividing line between
Townships 37 and 38. Said corporation may establish and maintain
depots in the City of Chicago, in said county, for the purpose of
receiving and carrying off from and out of the said city any and
all offal, dead animals, and other animal matter which they may buy
or own, or which may be delivered to them by the city authorities
and other persons."
In order to have a clear apprehension of the rights and
privileges which this charter was intended to secure to the company
and of the purposes which the legislature that granted it had in
view, it is both admissible and important to take notice of the
circumstances that existed at the time of its grant, so far as they
are shown by the record. Chicago was then a populous city, built
upon a level plain, where drainage and sewerage are exceedingly
difficult, if not impossible. The slaughtering of animals and
packing the flesh for markets in other places were conducted there
upon a stupendous scale. The business had been growing in magnitude
for years, and bid fair to be what it has become -- larger than
that of any city in the United states, if not in the world. Of
necessity, the amount of blood and offal produced was
correspondingly large. It could not be disposed of or allowed to
accumulate there without manifestly endangering the health and
injuriously affecting the comfort of the hundreds of thousands of
inhabitants of the city. It was therefore a matter of public
importance to provide for its removal elsewhere. Such would have
been the case had the business of slaughtering extended
Page 97 U. S. 674
no further than to supply the domestic market. At that time,
there was in the County of Cook, about thirteen miles south of the
city, a marshy region in the midst of swamps, and much of it at all
seasons covered with shallow ponds and bayous. It was very thinly
inhabited, and it held out few, if any, invitations for additional
settlement. Obviously it was a thing of public interest to relieve
the city from accumulations of the blood and offal and have them
transported to a place where they would cause no injury, or so much
less than they would cause if remaining in the midst of a dense
population. It cannot be supposed that the legislature was
unmindful of these considerations. The charter itself furnishes
evidence that its motive and purpose were to furnish relief to the
city, doing the least possible harm to residents in other
localities. It offered to the grantees certain privileges as the
consideration for large expenditures by them for removing from the
city the matter so injurious to its inhabitants. It expressly
authorized the establishment and maintenance by the corporation of
chemical and other works for the purpose of manufacturing and
converting dead animals and other animal matter into an
agricultural fertilizer and into other chemical products. It
designated the place where the works might be located as "in Cook
County, at any point south of the dividing line between Townships
37 and 38." It also granted to the corporation the right to
establish and maintain depots in the city
"for the purpose of receiving and carrying off from and out of
the city any and all offal, dead animals, and other animal matter
which they (the company) may buy or own, or which may be delivered
to them by the city authorities or other persons."
When accepted, it was, therefore, a contract by which the state
authorized the company to establish works and carry on a business
which, without the authority, would be a nuisance to a few persons,
in order to relieve a very large community from a greater nuisance.
It was therefore a grant of a right to maintain a local
nuisance.
In the exercise of the rights thus granted, the company
established their works at a place in Cook County, south of the
dividing line between Townships 37 and 38, in what
Page 97 U. S. 675
is now the Village of Hyde Park, but quite remote from the
thickly inhabited part of the village. The point at which they are
located is within the limits designated by the legislature. The
selection of the place within those limits was confided by the
charter to the company, and when the selection was made and the
works were erected, the charter conferred the right to maintain
them and carry on the business where they were located. I concede
that the company could not exercise their discretion wantonly or in
negligent disregard of the rights of others. But there is nothing
in the case tending to show such disregard or wantonness. There is
nothing to show, and it is not claimed, that the works are not at a
place where they were authorized to be erected. On the contrary,
there is everything to show that the neighborhood where they were
located was swampy and nearly uninhabited, giving, as I have said,
little promise of further improvement.
The company also, at large expense, erected receiving depots, as
authorized by the charter, for the purpose of receiving and
carrying from the city matter consisting of dead animals and offal,
and engaged in having it transported to the only railroad upon
which it could be transported to the chemical works located within
the limits of the municipal division known as Hyde Park Village.
That by the charter they were authorized to transport it thither I
regard as beyond any reasonable doubt. I admit to the fullest
extent the rule that all charters of private corporations are to be
construed most strongly against the corporations. Nothing is
granted that is not expressly or clearly implied. But this rule is
quite consistent with another, equally settled, that charters are
to receive a reasonable interpretation in view of the purposes for
which they were made. An express grant of power must include
whatever is indispensably necessary to its enjoyment. No man can
reasonably deny that a grant of power to establish works at a
certain place to convert animal matter into an agricultural
fertilizer, coupled with power to establish depots for receiving
and carrying it from the city, does authorize its transportation to
the converting works. It is not denied in the present case. One of
the rights, then, which the company obtained by their charter was
to carry the offal, dead animals, and other animal matter
Page 97 U. S. 676
into and through the Village of Hyde Park to the works
authorized for its conversion.
To recapitulate: the company obtained by their contract with the
state, among others, three rights: one, a right to establish and
maintain at a place in Cook County, south of the dividing line
between Townships 37 and 38, works for converting animal matter.
The works have been established there at a cost of more than
$200,000; second, they obtained the right to establish receiving
depots for receiving and carrying such matter from Chicago; and
third, they obtained the right to carry such matter from their
receiving depots to their converting works in Hyde Park. I do not
understand any of these propositions to be questioned either by the
defendants in error or by the majority of this Court.
The only serious question, therefore, is whether by any law of
the state this contract has been impaired and the rights assured by
it have been taken away. On the 26th of March, 1869, nearly two
years after the charter had been granted and accepted, the
legislature of the state passed an act entitled "An Act to revise
the charter of the town of Hyde Park, in Cook County," giving
therein full sanitary and police powers to the municipal
authorities, but containing the following proviso:
"The sanitary powers conferred by this act shall not be
exercised by said board of trustees as against the Northwestern
Fertilizing Company or the Union Rendering Company, located at or
near the Calumet River in said town, until the full expiration of
two years after the passage of this act."
Under this act, the board of trustees, on the 14th of February,
1870, adopted an ordinances declaring all establishments for
rendering offal, &c., nuisances, and imposing penalties upon
any person who shall own, keep, or use them. The ordinance also
prohibited the deposit of any dead animals or other filthy,
nauseous, or offensive substance on any lot, street, alley, or
other place in the town, and imposed penalties for any violation of
the ordinance. On the 10th of April, 1872, the Village of Hyde Park
was incorporated and succeeded to the rights and duties of the town
of the same name, and on twenty-ninth day of November of that year,
another ordinance of the village was made reiterating in substance
the provisions of the ordinance of Feb.
Page 97 U. S. 677
14, 1870. It went further, and its provisions make it impossible
for the company to enjoy the rights accorded to them by their
charter. It declared to be nuisances all places within the village
kept, occupied, or used for the purpose of rendering offal or
animal substances when the same is or may be kept in such a manner
as to occasion any offensive smell, and all places where any
nauseous, unwholesome, or offensive business may be carried on, and
it imposes penalties upon offenders. It prohibited the
establishment, maintenance, or carrying on of any offensive or
unwholesome business or establishment without the limits of the
village or within one mile of the limits thereof, and it ordained
that "no person shall transfer, carry, haul, or convey any offal,
dead animals, or other offensive matter or material into or through
the Village of Hyde Park." All these provisions are sanctioned by
prescribed penalties, and the village authorities are enforcing
them against the company. If they are enforced, it cannot carry on
the business which its charter authorized. The offal from Chicago
or elsewhere cannot be brought to the works, and if it could, the
company could not render it into a fertilizer. The ordinance is in
direct conflict with the legislative grant -- a grant which was for
a consideration returned, and which, therefore, has the force of a
contract. It is, in my judgment, a palpable violation of the
constitution provision that no state shall pass a law impairing the
obligation of a contract.
It has been suggested that the charter did not precisely
designate the place where the rendering works might be established
and to which the city offal might be carried, and hence it is
argued that notwithstanding the contract, it is within the power of
the legislature to order the removal of the works to another
locality, and that this may be done mediately by a municipal
corporation empowered by the state. The inference I emphatically
deny. It is true the charter empowered the company to select a
location within certain geographical limits, and did not itself
define the exact point, but when under this power a location was
made by the company, and hundreds of thousands of dollars were
expended upon it, it was beyond the power of the other contracting
party to change it. The location was lawful when made, and, if
lawful then, it cannot
Page 97 U. S. 678
be made unlawful afterwards. If it could be, it would be in the
power of the legislature to change it a second, a third, a fiftieth
time, and fix it at last at a place where none of the rights of the
company could be enjoyed. No one has ever doubted that when a
railroad company has been authorized, as is often the case, to
construct a railroad beginning at some point within a township or a
county, and has constructed its road from some point in that
township or county, its right to maintain it from that terminus is
indefeasible. That which was left uncertain has become certain. So,
if a warrant be granted for a tract of land in a specified district
without describing it, when the warrantee has selected a tract, the
contract is closed, and his right to that tract is absolute. It
must be, therefore, that the location of the company's works at the
places where they were located, recognized as a proper location in
the act of the legislature of 1869, is one which cannot be changed
without the consent of both parties to the contract, or without
compensation made.
But it is said the ordinance complained of is only an exercise
of the police power of the state, and that the charter must be
assumed to have been granted and accepted subject to that police
power. I admit that the police power of a state extends generally
to the prevention and removal of things injurious to the comfort of
the public. I admit also that the works of the company may have
been and probably were offensive, and were a nuisance unless their
character was changed by the law. So, also, carrying offal or
animal matter into or through the village may have been and
probably was more or less offensive. But the question now is were
the works or the transportation things illegal? In view of the
contract contained in the charter, was it a legitimate exercise of
the state's police power to declare them illegal, abate them, and
inflict penalties for doing what the state had declared that the
company might do? I am confident it was not. Had the charter been a
mere license, instead of a contract, the case would be different.
But the legislature may legalize acts which, without such
legislation, would be obnoxious to criminal law. It may legalize
that which, without such action, would be a nuisance. It may do
this either by law or by contract. It may limit the extent to
Page 97 U. S. 679
which its police power shall be exerted. And it often does. The
charter of a railroad company is a familiar illustration. Crossing
highways and running locomotives, were they not authorized by law,
would be nuisances. Who will contend that when a charter has been
granted for building a railway and running locomotives thereon, the
company or its agents can be punished criminally for maintaining a
nuisance? Why not? Because there is no nuisance in the eye of the
law, and the state has contracted away a portion of its police
power. So also an illustration may be found in the case of gas
companies. If a legislature charter a gas company and locate its
works at a designated place, authorizing the manufacture of gas
there, it would be marvelous indeed if the agents of the company
could be indicted for a nuisance, or if the legislature could
without compensation deny the exercise of the powers granted,
because manufacturing gas is offensive. The police power of a state
is no more sacred than its taxing power. We have held again and
again that a state may by contract with one of its corporations
bind itself not to tax the property of that corporation. If so, why
may it not bind itself not to exercise its police power over
certain employments. It would be a monstrous stretch of credulity
to conclude that the Legislature of Illinois did not intend such a
relinquishment of police power when it granted the charter to the
plaintiff in error. Its members must be assumed to have had common
knowledge. They knew the offensiveness of animal offal. The plain
object of the charter was to relieve the citizens of Chicago from
it. The legislature knew that the transportation of the offal to a
point south of the designated line, and its deposit there, would
inevitably be offensive to the much less numerous inhabitants of
the vicinity. With this knowledge, they authorized what the
plaintiff in error has been doing. They invited the investment of
$250,000 to enable it to be done, and they entered into a contract
that the company should have a right to do it for fifty years. To
say now, as the judgment in this case does, there was a tacit
reservation that under the pretense of exercising the police power
of the state, the rights of the company may all be taken away and
their investments destroyed without compensation is, in my opinion,
not only unjust but unwarranted by any judicial
Page 97 U. S. 680
decision heretofore made. While saying this, I freely admit that
the police power of the state may remain to regulate the conduct of
the company's business, provided the regulation does not extend to
the destruction of the chartered rights. It may prescribe that the
offal shall be transported to the appellants' works in closed cars
or wagons. It may impose reasonable regulations upon the
disposition of the offal when received at the rendering works, but
under the cover of regulation, it cannot destroy.
Nothing, I admit, is more indefinite than the extent or limits
of what is called police power. I will not undertake to define
them. Certainly it has limits. I refer to what Judge Cooley has
said in reference to the exercise of the power over private
corporations. Cooley, Const.Lim. 577. He says,
"The exercise of the police power in these cases must be this: t
he regulations must have reference to the comfort, safety, or
welfare of society; they must not be in conflict with any of the
provisions of the charter, and they must not, under the pretence of
regulations, take from the corporation any of the essential rights
and privileges which the charter confers. In short, they must be
police regulations in fact, and not amendments of the charter in
curtailment of the corporate franchise."
This I understand to be entirely correct. In support of it, he
refers to numerous decisions, which I will not cite but to which I
also refer. There are many others fully sustaining the text as I
have quoted it.
There is no authority to the contrary. The cases relied upon to
uphold the exercise of the power which the defendants in error
assert are all clearly distinguishable. They are not cases where
the police power was exerted for the destruction of a chartered
right distinctly granted by a contract.
The only decision referred to which has been made by this Court
is
Beer Company v. Massachusetts, supra, p.
97
U. S. 25. In my judgment, it furnishes no support for
the present ruling. The case was this:
In 1828, the legislature granted a charter to the Boston Beer
Company, by which they were made a corporation, "for the purpose of
manufacturing malt liquors in all their varieties," and made the
corporation subject to all the duties and requirements of an Act
passed on the 3d of March,
Page 97 U. S. 681
1809, entitled "An Act defining the general powers and duties of
manufacturing companies," and the several acts in addition thereto.
The general manufacturing act of 1809 contained a provision that
the legislature might from time to time, upon due notice to any
corporation, make further provisions and regulations for the
management of the business of the corporation and for the
government thereof, or wholly to repeal any act or part thereof
establishing any corporation, as should be deemed expedient. In
1829, the act of 1809 was repealed, with the following
qualification, however:
"But this repeal shall not affect the existing rights of any
person or the existing or future liabilities of any corporation, or
any members of any corporation now established, until such
corporation shall have adopted this act and complied with the
provisions herein contained."
The legislature of the state, in 1869, passed an act restricting
the sale within the Commonwealth of any malt liquors, and
prohibiting it except in certain specified cases.
The Supreme Court Judicial Court of the state adjudged first,
that the act of 1869 did not impair the obligation of the contract
contained in the charter of the beer company, so far as it related
to the sale of malt liquors, but was binding upon the company to
the same extent as on individuals. The sale was not expressly
authorized, nor authorized by necessary implication. And secondly,
the court held that the act was in the nature of a police
regulation in regard to the sale of a certain article of property,
and is applicable to the sale of such property by individuals and
corporations, even when the charter of the corporation cannot be
altered or repealed by the legislature.
We affirmed the decision of the state court. But there was
nothing in the charter that authorized, either expressly or by
necessary intendment, the company to sell their product within the
Commonwealth. It was not a contract to authorize what was a
nuisance when it was granted or what might thereafter become one.
It was not a contract respecting anything that was illegal when the
contract was made. The contract under consideration in the present
case was. It was made with reference to the exercise of the state's
police power, and in restraint of it. It is obvious, therefore, the
beer company's
Page 97 U. S. 682
case has no applicability to the one we have now in hand.
I have said enough to indicate the reasons for my dissent. To me
they appear very grave. In my judgment, the decision of the Court
denies the power of a state legislature to legalize, during a
limited period, that which without its action would be a nuisance.
It enables a subsequent legislature to take away, without
compensation, rights which a former one has accorded, in the most
positive terms and for which a valuable consideration has been
paid. And in its application to the present case, it renders it
impossible to remove from Chicago the vast bodies of animal offal
there accumulated, for if the ordinance of Hyde Park can stand,
every other municipality around the city can enforce similar
ordinances.