boundaries, as, for example, to acquire outside territory for sewerage purposes, and to exercise police power over the same; also to establish quarantine beyond the municipal boundaries and thus protect the citizens from epidemic of any contagious or infectious disease; also to locate and regulate houses of detention and hospitals for infectious and contagious diseases beyond the city limits.

The city may pass reasonable ordinances for the protection of the lives, limbs, health, comfort, and quiet of its citizens; and it has been held that such measure of police power as this is inherent in a municipal corporation, as being essential to the performance of its municipal functions as a public agency of the commonwealth.36

78. Summary power. The police power delegated to the municipality may be exercised either in the ordinary or in a summary manner. The municipality may lawfully employ through its police officers just so much force as is necessary to disperse a mob or quell a riot, even to the extent of maiming or killing persons engaged in the mob or riot, and in case of great conflagration in a city, which cannot otherwise be stopped, the municipality, through its proper authorities, may lawfully, and with impunity, tear down or blow up buildings owned by private citizens in order to arrest the progress of the flames.

When license is required in the exercise of a police power, then only such charge therefor may be made

36 The police power of a city extends to the regulation of water rates; City of Knoxville v. Knoxville Water Co., 107 Tenn. 647, 61 L. R. A. 888. A city may have a building demolished as unsafe; O'Rourke v. New Orleans, 106 La. 313.

as fairly represents the expense incident to the exercise of the power.37 Whether the license is for police or revenue, if not shown in the ordinance requiring it, will appear from the construction of the municipal charter.

The legislature may confer police power upon a municipality over subjects within the provisions of existing state laws. Jurisdiction to enforce state laws is often conferred upon the municipal courts; yet none of these things prevents the state from conferring police power upon municipalities over the same subject-matter.

79. Peace and order. The preservation of the public peace and order is the primary police function of a municipality. Whatever contention may have arisen over municipal police power, the authority to preserve the peace and order of the municipality, to prevent the exercise of unlawful violence, and to compel citizens and sojourners to abstain from riot, rout, and unlawful assembly, has never been seriously questioned. It is regarded as an inherent municipal power essential to municipal life; and so, whenever the authority has been mooted, it has been uniformly sustained, in some cases even to the extent of the doubtful power of double punishment. Such regulations are indispensable to municipalities in those states which, as a measure of public policy, declare municipal corporations responsible for the public peace and preservation of private property, and make them absolutely liable for damages done by a mob within the corporate boundaries.

37 Ash v. People, 11 Mich. 347, 83 Am. Dec. 740.

80. Sanitation.-The preservation of the health of the population is uniformly recognized as a most important municipal function, and the power to adopt and enforce sanitary regulations appropriate to this end is inherent in a municipality. These powers are favored in American courts, and it has been accordingly held that, since a supply of wholesome water is necessary to the comfort and well-being of a city, a municipal contract for the boring of an artesian well is an exercise of the police power. And so, likewise, the city may make such regulations as will insure pure milk or prevent the spread of a deadly disease in a fruit-producing tree. So, also, it may regulate the cultivation of crops, such as rice, within the corporate limits, the cleaning and care of sinks and cesspools, burial of the dead, and the location and operation of slaughter houses. It is competent also for a city to establish quarantine regulations, pesthouses, and places of detention, and to exclude, remove, or detain persons affected with, or who have been exposed to, contagious or infectious diseases. It may regulate also the removal of dead animals and garbage, and compel citizens to prepare the same for removal at minimum expense; and generally may suppress nuisance to the public health.

The power to regulate does not give power to prohibit; and, therefore, a city may not absolutely forbid the sale of meat or second-hand clothing, or other lawful business not in itself necessarily a nuisance. Ordinarily, the municipality must resort to the usual

38 Ferguson v. Selma, 43 Ala. 398; Smith v. Collier, 118 Ga. 306; Kennedy v. Phelps, 10 La. Ann. 227.

process of law to abate a health nuisance; but the state may confer upon it the power of summary abatement in case of emergency.39

81. Safety. The safety of life, limb and property being one of the prime objects of municipal incorporation, all appropriate regulations tending to promote this object are within the police power delegated to a municipality. Municipal corporations are, therefore, authorized, in the exercise of police power, to enact such ordinances and employ such necessary means as will insure safety to the private property as well as the persons of its citizens. Fire has been recognized as the greatest municipal peril, and measures to prevent the rise and spread of conflagrations are universal.

40

A city may, therefore, prescribe fire limits and forbid the erection of wooden buildings therein. A city may also pass ordinances prescribing the maximum quantity of gunpowder, dynamite, nitroglycerin, hay, excelsior, or other combustible or inflammable material which may be stored in one place or kept in one house in the city. It may also prescribe and enforce the construction of fire escapes on all buildings not strictly private. Ordinances may also be enacted prescribing safe chimneys, flues, and furnaces, and regulating the handling of coals, ashes, and the like; and, indeed, any other reasonable regulation to prevent and extinguish fires.

The supreme exercise of police power by a municipality for public safety is displayed in razing, in case

39 Baumgartner v. Hasty, 100 Ind. 575, 50 Am. Rep. 830.

40 State v. Johnson, 114 N. C. 846, 19 S. E. 599.

of emergency, valuable private property to prevent the spread of conflagration. This may be done without incurring any liability whatever to the owner, unless compensation has been provided by statute; the rule at common law being that the state might destroy, though it could not take private property without compensation.11

Another source of danger to public safety in a city is rapid locomotion in or across the streets thereof. Municipalities have authority to regulate the movement not only of railroad trains, street cars, omnibuses, hacks, automobiles,*2 but also individuals moving on horseback, bicycles, and other vehicles, and likewise to regulate the movement of water craft in the waters over which they have jurisdiction. Municipal ordinances have been sustained which restrict the running of trains within corporate limits to four miles an hour, require flagmen to be kept at street crossings, and those requiring a conductor on each street car, and many similar ordinances regulating speed and movements within the municipal jurisdiction whereby collisions may be avoided and human life and property saved from needless injury or reckless destruction.

Whatever causes public discomfort or inconvenience or immorality is subject to the police power. It has accordingly been held that a municipality may prohibit public profanity, street preaching, public drunkenness, carrying of concealed weapons, rock blasting, vagrancy, cruelty to animals, Sabbath

41 Baumgartner v. Hasty, 100 Ind. 575, 50 Am. Rep. 830. 42 Whitson v. Franklin, 34 Ind. 392.