hese cases--the
right of a State to regulate a business that is public in nature though
privately owned and managed.

The first of the "Granger cases," as they were termed by Justice Field
in a dissenting opinion, was not a railroad case primarily but grew out
of warehouse legislation which the farmers of Illinois secured in 1871.
This act established maximum charges for grain storage and required all
warehousemen to publish their rates for each year during the first week
in January and to refrain from increasing these rates during the year
and from discriminating between customers. In an endeavor to enforce
this law the railroad and warehouse commission brought suit against
Munn and Scott, a warehouse firm in Chicago, for failure to take out
the license required by the act. The suit, known as Munn vs. Illinois,
finally came to the United States Supreme Court and was decided in favor
of the State, two of the justices dissenting.* The opinion of the court
in this case, delivered by Chief Justice Waite, laid down the principles
which were followed in the railroad cases. The attorneys for the
warehousemen had argued that the act in question, by assuming to limit
charges, amounted to a deprivation of property without due process
of law and was thus repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States. But the court declared that it had
long been customary both in England and America to regulate by law any
business in which the public has an interest, such as ferries, common
carriers, bakers, or millers, and that the warehouse business in
question was undoubtedly clothed with such a public interest. Further,
it was asserted that this right to regulate implied the right to fix
maximum charges, and that what those charges should be was a legislative
and not a judicial question.

* 94 United States Reports, 113.

In deciding the railroad cases the courts applied the same general
principles, the public nature of the railroad business having already
been established by a decision in 1872.* Another point was involved,
however, because of the contention of the attorneys for the companies
that the railway charters were contracts and that the enforcement of the
laws would amount to an impairment of contracts, which was forbidden by
the Constitution. The court admitted that the charters were contracts
but denied that state regulation could be considered an impairment of
contracts unless the terms of t