little question; but when it comes to indefinite words like "comfort"
or "well-being," too wide a field is left for the imagination. It
has recently been decided that the aesthetic part of life does not
necessarily concern the comfort or well-being of the people. That is
to say, laws forbidding the use of land for the erection of hideous
signs, or forbidding the height of buildings at an inartistic excess
have been declared not to fall within the police power, but under
eminent domain. So of statutes forbidding the taking of a man's
picture, or a woman's portrait for advertising purposes, when not
properly obtained; yet it may be questioned if any law is more
certainly for the comfort of the persons concerned than such a
statute. On the other hand, noisy or noxious trades, mosquito ponds,
trees infected with moths, etc., sawdust in water, offensive smoke,
and, in Vermont, signs, were all made nuisances by statute of one
State or other in 1905 alone. The first historical instance, perhaps,
of destruction of property under the police power was the blowing
up of buildings to check a conflagration, a practice still common,
although its utility was much questioned after the Boston fire,
and which, at common law at least, gave the owner no right to
compensation; but the more usual use of the police power until very
recent years has been limited to the prohibition of offensive trades
in certain localities, and the suppression of public nuisances. Later,
the prohibition of the manufacture of intoxicating or malt liquors,
and the regulation of tenement houses at the orders of the Board of
Health. This led to the regulation or prohibition of certain trades
conducted in tenement houses or in sweat shops, and to other matters
which we shall find it more convenient to consider under the head of
labor legislation.

Whether there are any limits to this power is much discussed. There is
no question that the power must not be arbitrary or utterly without
reason, and of that reason the courts must and do in fact judge.
Taking property for a purpose unjustified by the police power is,
of course, taking property without due process of law. An arbitrary
statute taking the property of _A_ and giving it to _B_, or even to
the public, without compensation has, from the time of Lord Coke
himself, been the classic definition of an unjustifiable law and one
which with us at least is unconstitutional; but our courts wisely
refuse to judge if, whe