ely as an exercise by
the State of its police power, and as such is subject only to the
restrictions which due process of law imposes on arbitrary interference
with liberty and property. Nor was the Court disturbed by the fact that
a "scientific validity" had been claimed for the theories of Adam Smith
relating to the "price that will clear the market." However much the
minority might stress the unreasonableness of any artificial State
regulation interfering with the determination of prices by "natural
forces,"[185] the majority was content to note that the "due process
clause makes no mention of prices" and that "the courts are both
incompetent and unauthorized to deal with the wisdom of the policy
adopted or the practicability of the law enacted to forward it."

Having thus concluded that it is no longer the nature of the business
which determines the validity of a regulation of its rates or charges
but solely the reasonableness of the regulation, the Court had little
difficulty in upholding, in Olsen _v._ Nebraska,[186] a State law
prescribing the maximum commission which private employment agencies may
charge. Rejecting the contentions of the employment agencies that the
need for such protective legislation had not been shown, the Court held
that differences of opinion as to the wisdom, need, or appropriateness
of the legislation "suggest a choice which should be left to the
States"; and that there was "no necessity for the State to demonstrate
before us that evils persist despite the competition" between public,
charitable, and private employment agencies. The older case of Ribnik
_v._ McBride,[187] which founded the invalidation of similar legislation
upon the now obsolete concept of a "business affected with a public
interest" was expressly overruled.

JUDICIAL REVIEW OF PUBLICLY DETERMINED RATES AND CHARGES

Development

In Munn _v._ Illinois,[188] its initial holding concerning the
applicability of the Fourteenth Amendment to governmental price
fixing,[189] the Court, not only asserted that governmental regulation
of rates charged by public utilities and allied businesses was within
the States' police power but added that the determination of such rates
by a legislature was conclusive and not subject to judicial review or
revision. Expanding the range of permissible governmental fixing of
prices, the Court, in the Nebbia Case,[190] more recently declared that
prices established for business in general w