From what has been said, it is plain that the tax qua tax conforms to constitutional requirements, and that our inquiry as to its validity would end at this point if the proceeds of the tax were to be covered into the state treasury, and thus made subject to appropriation by the legislature.

Second. Validity of the Tax as Determined by Its Purposes. The devotion of the tax to the purposes specified by the Act requires our consideration of the objections pressed upon us that the tax is invalid because the purposes are invalid, and because the methods chosen for their execution transgress constitutional limitations. It is not denied that since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment state taxing power can be exerted only to effect a public purpose and does not embrace the raising of revenue for private purposes. See Green v. Frazier, 253 U. S. 233, 238; Milheim v. Moffat Tunnel Dist., 262 U. S. 710, 717; Fallbrook Irrigation Dist. v. Bradley, 164 U. S. 112, 158; Jones v. Portland, 245 U. S. 217, 221. The states, by their constitutions and laws, may set their own limits upon their spending power, see Loan Association v. Topeka, 20 Wall. 655; cf. Parkersburg v. Brown, 106 U. S. 487; Cole v. La Grange, 113 U. S. 1, but the requirements of due process leave free scope for the exercise of a wide legislative discretion in determining what expenditures will serve the public interest.

This Court has long and consistently recognized that the public purposes of a state, for which it may raise funds by taxation, embrace expenditures for its general welfare. Fallbrook Irrigation Dist. v. Bradley, supra, 161; Green v. Frazier, supra, 240, 241. The existence of local conditions which, because of their nature and extent, are of concern to the public as a whole, the modes of advancing the public interest by correcting them or avoiding their consequences, are peculiarly within the knowl

edge of the legislature, and to it, and not to the courts, is committed the duty and responsibility of making choice of the possible methods. See Fallbrook Irrigation Dist. v. Bradley, supra, 160; Jones v. Portland, supra, 221, 224, 225; Green v. Frazier, supra, 239, 240. As with expenditures for the general welfare of the United States, United States v. Butler, 297 U. S. 1, 67; Helvering v. Davis, post, p. 619, whether the present expenditure serves a public purpose is a practical question addressed to the law-making department, and it would require a plain case of departure from every public purpose which could reasonably be conceived to justify the intervention of a court. See Cincinnati Soap Co. v. United States, supra; cf. Jones v. Portland, supra. The present case exhibits no such departure.

(a) Relief of Unemployment as a Public Purpose. Support of the poor has long been recognized as a public purpose, see Kelly v. Pittsburgh, 104 U. S. 78, 81. We need not labor the point that expenditures for the relief of the unemployed, conditioned on unemployment alone, without proof of indigence of recipients of the benefits, is a permissible use of state funds. For the past six years the nation, unhappily, has been placed in a position to learn at first hand the nature and extent of the problem of unemployment, and to appreciate its profound influence upon the public welfare. Detailed accounts of the problem and its social and economic consequences, to be found in public reports of the expenditures of relief funds, and in the studies of many observers, afford a basis for the legislative judgment. It suffices to say that they show that unemployment apparently has become a permanent incident of our industrial system; that it varies, in extent and intensity, with fluctuations in the volume of seasonal businesses and with the business cycle. It is dependent, with special and unpredictable manifestations, upon tech

nological changes and advances in methods of manufacture, upon changing demands for manufactured products-dictated by changes in fashion or the creation of desirable substitutes, and upon the establishment of new sources of competition.

The evils of the attendant social and economic wastage permeate the entire social structure. Apart from poverty, or a less extreme impairment of the savings which afford the chief protection to the working class against old age and the hazards of illness, a matter of inestimable consequence to society as a whole, and apart from the loss of purchasing power, the legislature could have concluded that unemployment brings in its wake increase in vagrancy and crimes against property, reduction in the number of marriages, deterioration of family life, decline in the birth rate, increase in illegitimate births," impairment of

'See, e. g., National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (1931), Report on the Causes of Crime, No. 13, especially p. 312.

* From 1924 to 1932, inclusive, the marriage rate in Alabama, determined by marriages per 1,000 population, was as follows: 11.4; 11.9; 11.9; 11.6; 11.2; 11.2; 10.4; 9.7; 9.4 [derived from Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1926, Table 90; id., 1928, Table 95; id., 1930, Table 99 id., 1932, Table 80; id., 1936, Table 92]. The first sizeable decline came in 1930.

"See State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Report relating to the registration of births and deaths in the State of Alabama for the year ending 31st December, 1935, p. XXXVII: "Between 1910 and 1927, the trend in the birth rate was upward, except in 1918, the year in which the outbreak of influenza occurred and the following year. From 1927 to 1935, the trend has been downward, the rate of decline having been practically constant since 1928 forward, with the single exception in 1934. The rise in 1934 was due to a number of factors, including an increase in birth registration following the registration campaign and marriages."

*See Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Alabama, 1933, p. 166, Table XXV. The rate of illegitimate births per 1,000 live births, for the years 1929 through 1933, were 70.4; 74.6; 81.6; 88.7;

7

the health of the unemployed and their families and malnutrition of their children.R

Although employment in Alabama is predominantly in agriculture, and the court below found that agricultural unemployment is not an acute problem, the census reports disclose the steadily increasing percentage of those employed in industrial pursuits in Alabama. The total amount spent for emergency relief in Alabama, in the years 1933 to 1935 inclusive, exceeded $47,000,000, of which $312,000 came from state funds, $2,243,000 from local sources, and the balance from relief funds of the federal government.10 These figures bear eloquent witness to the inability of local agencies to cope with the problem without state action and resort to new taxing legislation. Expenditure of public funds under the present statute, for relief of unemployment, will afford some

'A survey of 4,137 people in Birmingham, Alabama, and covering three months in the spring of 1933, showed that the rate of illness [disabling illness per 1,000 persons] was 165 in families with no employed workers; 148 in families with at least one part-time worker, but no full-time workers; and 140 in families with at least one fulltime worker. See Perrott and Collins, Relation of sickness to income and income change in 10 surveyed communities, Public Health Reports (United States Public Health Service), vol. 50, p. 595, at 606, Table 6.

See Eliot, Martha M., Some effects of the depression on the nutrition of children, Hospital Social Service, vol. 28, p. 585; Palmer, Carroll E., Height and weight of children of the depression poor, Public Health Reports, vol. 50, p. 1106.

Of those employed in Alabama the per cent. employed in industry were 19.5% in 1900; 21.4% in 1910; 30.7% in 1920; 33.6% in 1930; 24.3% in 1935. (Last figure estimated at the trial by Gist, formerly statistician of the Department of Agriculture, and since Feb. 1, 1936, economic adviser to the Commissioner of Agriculture of Alabama.) The decline in 1935 may be taken to corroborate the greater susceptibility of employment in industry to the depression.

10 Figures obtained from Federal Emergency Relief Administration, as stated in Appendix to the Brief of Respondent, No. 837, Chas. C. Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, pp. 74-75, Table 17.

protection to a substantial group of employees,11 and we cannot say that it is not for a public purpose.

The end being legitimate, the means is for the legislature to choose. When public evils ensue from individual misfortunes or needs, the legislature may strike at the evil at its source. If the purpose is legitimate because public, it will not be defeated because the execution of it involves payments to individuals. Kelly v. Pittsburgh, supra; Knights v. Jackson, 260 U. S. 12, 15; cf. Mountain Timber Co. v. Washington, 243 U. S. 219, 239– 240. "Individual interests are aided only as the common interest is safeguarded." See Cochran v. Board of Education, 281 U. S. 370, 375; cf. Clark v. Nash, 198 U. S. 361, 367; Hairston v. Danville & Western Ry. Co., 208 U. S. 598, 608; Noble State Bank v. Haskell, 219 U. S. 104, 110.

(b) Extension of Benefits. The present scheme of unemployment relief is not subject to any constitutional infirmity, as respondents argue, because it is not limited to the indigent or because it is extended to some less deserving than others, such as those discharged for misconduct. While we may assume that the state could have limited its award of unemployment benefits to the indigent and to those who had not been rightfully discharged from their employment, it was not bound to do so. Pov

11

Appellees point to an estimate that, largely because of the large agricultural population, only 26.81% of those employed in Alabama as of October 14, 1936, were covered by the Act.

But it was estimated at the trial by Gist [formerly statistician of the Department of Agriculture, and since Feb. 1, 1936, economic adviser to the Commissioner of Agriculture of Alabama], that if in 1941 there should be a recurrence of unemployment "somewhat equivalent to the period we have just come through, and employment in the industrial groups under consideration should drop to, say 170,000 [approximately the number employed in 1932], we would find Alabama with something like 64,000 unemployed persons who would be entitled to the benefits of this Act."