d licenses for
admissions to places of amusement,[349] grain elevators,[350] detective
agencies,[351] sale of cigarettes,[352] or cosmetics,[353] and the
resale of theatre tickets;[354] or which absolutely forbade the
advertising of cigarettes,[355] or the use of a representation of the
United States flag on an advertising medium,[356] the solicitation by a
layman of business of collecting and adjusting claims,[357] the keeping
of private markets within six squares of a public market,[358] the
keeping of billiard halls except in hotels,[359] or the purchase by junk
dealers of wire, copper, etc., without ascertaining the sellers' right
to sell.[360]

PROTECTION OF RESOURCES OF THE STATE

Oil and Gas

To prevent waste production may be prorated; the prohibition of wasteful
conduct, whether primarily in behalf of the owners of gas in a common
reservoir or because of the public interests involved is consistent with
the Constitution.[361] Thus a statute which defines waste as including,
in addition to its ordinary meaning, economic waste, surface waste, and
waste incident to production in excess of transportation or marketing
facilities or reasonable market demands, and which provides that
whenever full production from a common source of supply can be obtained
only under conditions constituting waste, a producer may take only such
proportion of all that may be produced from such common source without
waste, as the production of his wells bears to the total production of
such common source, is not repugnant to the due process clause.[362] But
whether a system of proration based on hourly potential is as fair as
one based upon estimated recoverable reserves or some other combination
of factors is a question for administrative and not judicial judgment.
In a domain of knowledge still shifting and growing, and in a field
where judgment is necessarily beset by the necessity of inferences
bordering on the conjecture even for those learned in the art, it has
been held to be presumptuous for courts, on the basis of conflicting
expert testimony, to nullify an oil proration order, promulgated by an
administrative commission in execution of a regulatory scheme intended
to conserve a State's oil resources, as violative of due process.[363]
On the other hand, where the evidence showed that an order, purporting
to limit daily total production of a gas field and to prorate the
allowed production among several wells, had for its real