It is much too late to argue that legislation intended to facilitate the opportunity of children to get a secular education serves no public purpose. Cochran v. Louisiana State Board of Education, 281 U.S. 370 , 50 S. Ct. 335; Holmes, J., in Interstate Consolidated Street Ry. Co. v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 207 U.S. 79, 87 , 28 S.Ct. 26, 27, 12 Ann.Cas. 555. See opinion of Cooley, J., in Stuart v. School District No. 1 of Village of Kalamazoo, 1878, 30 Mich. 69. The same thing is no less true of legislation to reimburse needy parents, or all parents, for payment of the fares of their children so that they can ride in public busses to and from schools rather than run the risk of traffic and other hazards incident to walking or 'hitchhiking.' See Barbier v. Connolly, supra, 113 U.S. at page 31, 5 S.Ct. at page 359. See also cases collected 63 A.L.R. 413; 118 A.L.R. 806. Nor does it follow that a law has a private rather than a public purpose because it provides that tax-raised funds will be paid to reimburse i dividuals on account of money spent by them in a way which furthers a public program. See Carmichael v. Southern Coal & Coke Co., 301 U.S. 495, 518 , 57 S.Ct. 868, 876, 109 A.L.R. 1327. Subsidies and loans to individuals such as farmers and home owners, and to privately owned transportation systems, as well as many other kinds of businesses, have been commonplace practices in our state and national history.
Insofar as the second phase of the due process argument may differ from the first, it is by suggesting that taxation for transportation of children to church schools constitutes support of a religion by the State. But if the law is invalid for this reason, it is because it violates the First Amendment's prohibition against the establishment of religion [330 U.S. 1, 8] by law. This is the exact question raised by appellant's second contention, to consideration of which we now turn.