Section 1 of the Ordinance Any Stone Crusher, Rolling Mill, Carpet

beating establishment, fireworks factory, soap factory, or any other works or factory where power other than animal power is used to operate, or in the operation of the same, or any hay barn, wood yard, lumber yard, public laundry or wash house.”

The ordinance was tested in the case of Ex Parte Quong Wo. The petitioner, Quong Wo, who had been convicted and imprisoned for carrying on a public laundry and wash house in a residence district, sought to be discharged from custody. The court dismissed the application for a writ of habeas corpus, finding that it was within the lawful exercise of the police power to confine the business of operating a public laundry or wash house within defined limits. The following language of the decision is particularly in point:

“There can be no question that the power to regulate the carrying on of certain lawful occupations in a city includes the power to confine the carrying on of the same to certain limits whenever such restriction may reasonably be found necessary to subserve the ends for which the police power exists.... It is primarily for the legislative body clothed with this power to determine when such regulations are essential, and its determination in this regard, in view of its better knowledge of all the circumstances and the presumption that it is acting with a due regard for the rights of all parties will not be disturbed in the courts, unless it can plainly be seen that the regulation has no relation to the ends above stated, but is a clear invasion of personal or property rights under the guise of police regulation.”

This decision was reviewed and upheld in the case of Montgomery’s application for a writ of habeas corpus, the only difference in the cases being that the petitioner in the latter case was imprisoned for carrying on or maintaining a lumber yard within the residence district. The contention was made by Montgomery that a lumber yard was not one of those specific occupations which could be regulated under the exercise of the police power since it was not enumerated in the charter of the city. The court found specifically that if the ordinance could be upheld under the general police power of the city, it would not fall merely because the city had specific authority under its charter to suppress certain other kinds of business.

A similar ordinance has been proposed for the city of St. Paul: