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Subject Area: Law
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

§ 148.: Regulation of mines and mineral products.— - Christopher G. Tiedeman, A Treatise on State and Federal Control of Persons and Property in the United States considered from both a Civil and Criminal Standpoint, vol. 2 [1900]

Edition used:

A Treatise on State and Federal Control of Persons and Property in the United States considered from both a Civil and Criminal Standpoint (St. Louis: The F.H. Thomas Law Book Co., 1900). Vol. 2.

Part of: A Treatise on State and Federal Control of Persons and Property in the United States considered from both a Civil and Criminal Standpoint, 2 vols.

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§ 148.

Regulation of mines and mineral products.—

In the mining States, there are numerous regulations which are designed to secure the safety and health of the miners and the protection of the adjoining property. So far as I know, the reasonableness and necessity of these regulations have been so apparent that their constitutionality has not been attacked, except in the case of the regulations which limit the hours of work of the miners, as has been already explained in a preceding section;1 and in the following case from Missouri. A law was passed in that State, requiring in all dry and dusty coal mines, in which light carbonated hydrogen gas is discharged, or in which the coal is blasted off the solid, that shot-firers must be employed to fire the shots, after the employees have left the mines, and prohibiting any firing while the miners are still at work or in the mines, upon pain of fine and imprisonment, for any violation of the statute. The Supreme Court of Missouri held this to be only a reasonable exercise of the police power for the protection of the health and life of the miners, and that it did not constitute a taking of the property of the mine-owner without due process of law.2

A curious regulation, somewhat akin to the regulation of the right to hunt game and to catch fish, has been adopted in Indiana, for the purpose of preventing the waste of the natural gas, which is found in the coal mines of that and neighboring States. Inasmuch as the natural gas deposits are the common property of all the landowners, a wasteful use of the gas by one of them, works necessarily an injury to all, which is certainly unjustifiable in morals, and which is now made illegal and punishable by statute. The Supreme Court of Indiana has sustained the constitutionality of the law, as a reasonable exercise of police power.3

This natural gas is now transported for consumption from place to place, and from State to State, in pipes, in the same manner that manufactured gas is distributed. The legislature of the States, in which the natural gas is so transported, have adopted regulations, to insure against waste and explosions, which require the pipes to have a prescribed strength of pressure. This regulation has been resisted by the transportation companies, on two grounds: first that the prescribed limitation of the pressure was unreasonable, and hence was a takiag of property without due process of law, and secondly, that it was an interference with interstate commerce. On both propositions the courts have sustained the regulation.1

[1]§ 102.

[2]State v. Murlin, 137 Mo. 297; 38 S. W. 923.

[3]Townsend v. State, 147 Ind. 624.

[1]That it was a reasonable exercise of police power, Jamieson v. Indiana Natural Gas & Oil Co., 128 Ind. 555. That it was not a regulation of interstate commerce, Consumers’ Gas Trust Co. v. Harless, 131 Ind. 446; Benedict v. Columbus Construction Co., 49 N. J. Eq. 23.