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"The motives of the legislators, considered as the purposes they had in view, will always be presumed to be to accomplish that which, follows as the natural & reasonable effect of their enactments." (p. 710).

These two cases may be contrasted with that of Tick Wo where the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco issued an Ordinance prohibiting the establishment of a laundry, without their consent, except in a brick or stone building; that Ordinance was declared invalid as granting naked or arbitrary discretion to the Board. The Supreme Court distinguished it from the Ordinances dealt with in the cases of Barbier; & Soon Hing & relied upon the evidence produced by Yick Wo to the effect that the Board of Supervisors had discriminated arbitrarily against the Chines. The discrimination was admitted by the Board itself & it could give no reason for it. No reason could even be suggested in the argument. Hayes v. Missouri, maintained the validity of a Missouri statute laying down that in capital cases, in cities having a population of less than one lac the State would be allowed eight peremptory challenges to jurors & in other cities, fifteen. Hayes was convicted on a charge of murder in the city of Louis having a population of more than a lac. He challenged his conviction on the ground that the division of the cities into two classes was arbitrary. The Supreme Court held otherwise. Peremptory challenges were necessary in order to secure impartial jurora. Special care was needed in larger towns to have independent jurors & so a larger number of challenges was allowed to the State. The accused could not demand anything more than an impartial jury & this right was not in any way affected by the classification. A Kansas law provided that if a prosecution was launched without probable cause & maliciously, the prosecutor could be ordered to pay costs of the other party & to go to jail in default. Lowe was made to pay costs of his adversary under this law & he challenged the law on the ground that it made invidious discrimination. The Supreme Court rejected his plea on the ground that the law was applicable to all persons under like circumstances & did not subject an individual to arbitrary exercise of power; see Lowe v Kansas. A Missouri statute making railway corporations liable for property destroyed by fires from its locomotives & giving them an insurable interest in property situated along their routes was held valid in St. Louis & San Francisco Railway Co. v. Mathews. As there was no discrimination against any particular railway corporation and they all were subject to the same liability, the statute did not deny the equal protection of laws to the railway corporations. There was justification for singling out the railway corporations to be made the subject-matter of a special law. In Lisenba, v. California 314 U. S. 219 : 86 Law. Ed. 166, Lisenba, who was convicted of murder on the basis of a confession alleged by him to have been extorted from him, complained of denial of the equal protection of laws. His argument was that the officers of the State treated some accused as they treated him & others as required by law & discrimination resulted thereby. The argument was dismissed as frivolous by the Supreme Court. As Illinois statute required that a petition to form & nominate a new political party should be signed by at least twenty-five thousand voters, provided that they include at least 200 voters from each of 50 counties out of 101 counties in the State; it was contended to be discriminatory. The contention was repelled (Douglas J. dissenting). The Court held that it is allowable state policy to require that candidates for State-wide office should have support not limited to a concentrated locality; MacDougall v. Green. A Michigan statute forbade women from being licensed as bar tenders & made an exception in favour of wives & daughters of owners of liquor establishments. It was held to be not discriminating between women & men or wives & daughters of owners & other women. It was observed that the State could forbid all women from being licensed as bar tenders, though it could not "play favourites among women without rhyme or reason". Bar-tending by women might in the allowable legislative judgment give rise to moral & social problems against which the State might devise preventive measures. But the State need not go to the full length if it believed that as to a defined group of females other factors might operate to eliminate or reduce the problems. This might have been the belief of the Michigan Legislature, justifying the distinction between the wives & daughters & other females. See Goesaert v. deary. A New York City Regulation prohibited advertising vehicles in streets but permitted putting of business notices upon business delivery or regular work vehicles of the business owners. The object of the Regulation was to reduce the traffic problem; it was thought that the advertisements caused distraction. The Regulation was assailed on the ground that it discriminated arbitrarily between advertising vehicles & vehicles belonging to owners of businesses. The Supreme Court held the Regulation to be valid because the local authority might have thought that advertisement of own wares on own vehicles might not present the same problem as that presented by vehicles hired only to carry advertisements and it was an allowable judgment. See Railway Express Agency Inc. v. New York, 336 U. S. 106 : 93 Law. Ed. 533. Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corporation, 337 U. S. 641 : 93 Law Ed, 1528, ruled the validity of a classification based on a percentage or an amount, the Court observing that such classification is necessarily somewhat arbitrary. Buck v. Bell established the constitutionality of a Sterilisation Act passed by the State of Virginia. The Act mentioned that experience shows that heredity plays an important part in the transmission of insanity, imbecility, etc. and that the Commonwealth was supporting in various institutions many defective persons who, on discharge, would become a menace, but rendered incapable of procreating might be discharged with safety and provided that superintendents of certain institutions had the power to perform the sterilisation operation upon inmates under their care. The Act provided safeguards in respect of those inmates whose health did not permit the operation. On behalf of Buck, an inmate of one of the prescribed institutions and ordered to be sterilised, it was contended that the Act made an illegal discrimination between the insane and the imbecile lodged in certain institutions and the other insane and imbecile persons. Holmes J. dismissed the objection as "the usual last resort of constitutional arguments". He gave, what has been described by Fairman, as "the stock response to that sort of contention", that the law does all that is needed when it does all that it can.