How did Justice Harlan describe the relationship between liberty of contract and state police power?

In his dissent for Lochner v. New York, Justice John Marshall Harlan acknowledged that the liberty of contract is a protected right, but he argued that it must remain subordinate to the state's police power.1

Harlan maintained that the Fourteenth Amendment was never intended to interfere with the state's authority to enact regulations for the protection of the lives, health, and safety of the public against the injurious exercise of individual rights. By positioning the police power as a fundamental tool for safeguarding public welfare, he asserted that contractual freedom cannot be used to override legitimate state efforts to protect citizens.1