Case ID: miss_78/html/0347-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Terral, J.,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Alexander M. Lynch v. State of Mississippi.
    Cbiminal Law. Privilege taxes. Licenses. Tinware. Washing machines.
    
    The term tinware embraces washing machines made of tin, and a license is not required for the sale of such machines manufactured in this state.
    From the circuit court of Tippah county.
    Hon. Z. M. Stephens, Judge.
    Lynch, the appellant, was .prosecuted by the state, being charged with having ‘ ‘ engaged in the business of a transient vendor of merchandise, selling washing machines and wringers without being a licensed peddler.” The tax on transient vendors of merchandise in each county is $25, but by laws 1898, p. 21, a tax is imposed “ on each peddler of tinware or pottery, or both, not manufactured in this state. ” It is expressly provided, however, that a person, or his employe, peddling pottery or tinware manufactured by himself in this state, shall not be required to pay a privilege tax. The privilege tax laws make it a misdemeanor to carry on the business taxed without having paid the taxes and procured license so to do. On the trial it was shown that the articles in which appellant had been dealing were washing machines made of tin, and that they were manufactured in this state. From a conviction in the circuit court appellant appealed to the supreme court.
    
      ■Jones <& Spight and F. A. Witherspoon, for appellant.
    The washers were made wholly of tin and were surely household articles, and if they are not tinware we do not know where to class them. They are certainly no other kind of ware. They are composed of tin and manufactured in this state, and are not subject to a tax. The defendant was an employe of the patentee and manufacturer. Sec. 61, acts 1898, ch. 5, p. 22.
    
      
      Monroe MoGlurg, attorney-general, for appellee.
   Terral, J.,

delivered the opinion of the court.

The appellant was charged by affidavit with selling in Tippah county washing machines and wringers without license. He claimed that he sold only family rights to the use of the washing machine patented by E. R. Orooker, for whom he (Lynch) was acting as agent in the sale of the family rights, and that he furnished to the purchaser a model of the washing machine manufactured in the state,’ and entirely of tin, by the patentee. The proof showed that the wringers were a patented article also, manufactured in the state of Ohio, and were merely ordered from Ohio at the request of the purchaser of the clothes washer. We think the defendant below was improperly convicted, and that he was acting in conformity with law, whether he was selling family rights or was selling the machine itself. Tinware is defined in the Standard Dictionary as “household articles, collectively, as vessels and dishes, made of tin plate,” and we see no reason for excepting the tin clothes washer out of that definition. The law required no license for selling tinware manufactured in this state, and the appellant should have been acquitted.