Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/187/622/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 20:16:36+00:00

Document:
An ordinance passed by the board of aldermen of the City of Greensboro, North Carolina, in pursuance of powers conferred by the legislature of the state, that every person engaged in the business of selling or delivering picture frames, pictures, photographs or likenesses of the human face in the City of Greensboro, whether an order for the same shall have been previously taken or not, shall pay a license tax of ten dollars for each year, is an attempt to interfere with, and to regulate commerce, and as such is invalid as to an agent of a corporation residing out of the state. Where a portrait company carrying on business in one state obtains orders through an agent in another state for pictures and frames, the fact that, in filling the orders, it ships the pictures and frames in separate packages, for convenience in packing and handling, to its own agent, who places the pictures in their proper places or frames and delivers them to the persons ordering them, does not deprive the transaction of its character of interstate commerce, or take it out of the salutary protection of the commerce clause of the federal Constitution.
"The business mentioned in the ordinance. following is not"
named in the charter of the city, other than in the above section.
"That the following is an ordinance duly passed by the Board of Aldermen of the City of Greensboro under and by virtue of the foregoing section of said charter, and prior to any of the orders being taken:"
" Be it ordained by the Board of Aldermen of the City of Greensboro, North Carolina:"
for the same shall have been previously taken or not, unless the said business is carried on by the same person in connection with some other business for which a license has already been paid to the city, shall pay a license tax of ten dollars for each year."
" Any person engaging in said business without having paid the license tax required herein shall be fined twenty dollars, and each and every sale or delivery shall constitute a separate and distinct offense."
"That neither the defendant, the Chicago Portrait Company, nor any of the employees of the Chicago Portrait Company, have paid the city any license tax."
"If, upon the foregoing facts, the court shall be of opinion that the defendant is guilty, the jury say that he is guilty; otherwise they say that he is not guilty."
"That on the ___ day of _____, 1900, the defendant, being employed by the Chicago Portrait Company, a foreign corporation, of Chicago, Illinois, came to Greensboro for the purpose of delivering certain pictures and frames for which contracts of sale had previously been made by other employees of the Chicago Portrait Company, who had preceded the defendant in Greensboro;"
"That the defendant went to the Southern Railway freight station and took therefrom large packages of pictures and frames which had been shipped to Greensboro, North Carolina, addressed to the Chicago Portrait Company, carried these packages to the rooms of the defendant in the Woods House, a hotel in the City of Greensboro, and there broke the bulk, placing said pictures in their proper frames, and from this point delivered the pictures one at a time to the purchasers in the City of Greensboro;"
"The defendant had been engaged in this work two days when arrested;"
"That section 57 of the Charter of the City of Greensboro, North Carolina, is as follows:"
by suit, or the articles upon which the tax is imposed, or any other property of the owner made by forthwith distrained and sold to satisfy the same, namely:"
" 21. Upon all subjects taxed under Schedule B, chapter one hundred and thirty six, Laws of North Carolina, session of one thousand eight hundred and eighty-three, not heretofore provided for, shall pay a license or privilege tax of ten dollars. And the board of aldermen shall have power to impose a license tax on any business carried on in the City of Greensboro not before enumerated herein, not to exceed ten dollars a year."
Upon this special verdict, the court adjudged that defendant was guilty and sentenced him to pay a fine of twenty dollars and costs of the action. From this judgment the defendant appealed to the Supreme Court of North Carolina. That court, Faircloth, C.J., and Clark, J., dissenting, on November 7, 1900, affirmed the judgment of the superior court, and thereupon the cause was brought to this Court by a writ of error allowed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina.
we think the case falls within previous decisions of this Court on this subject.
"all drummers and all persons not having a regular licensed house of business in the taxing district, offering for sale or selling goods, wares, or merchandise therein by sample, shall be required to pay to the county trustee the sum of $10 per week or $25 per month for such privilege, and no license shall be issued for a longer period of three months."
employment or business exercised under authority of the Constitution and laws of the United States, and imposes taxes upon all property within the state, mingled with and forming part of the great mass of property therein, but that, in making such internal regulations, a state cannot impose taxes upon persons passing through the state, or coming into it merely for a temporary purpose, especially if connected with interstate or foreign commerce; nor can it impose such taxes upon property imported into the state from abroad, or from another state, and not become part of the common mass of property therein, and no discrimination can be made, by such regulations, adversely to the persons or property of other states, and no regulations can be made directly affecting interstate commerce.
protection of its own citizens, we are brought back to the condition of things which existed before the adoption of the Constitution, and which was one of the principal causes that led to it. If the selling of goods by sample and the employment of drummers for that purpose injuriously affect the local interest of the states, Congress, if applied to, will undoubtedly make such reasonable regulations as the case may demand. And Congress alone can do it, for it is obvious that such regulations should be based on a uniform system applicable to the whole country, and not left to the varied, discordant, or retaliatory enactments of forty different states. The confusion into which the commerce of the country would be thrown by being subject to state legislating on this subject would be but a repetition of the disorder which prevailed under the articles of confederation."
Asher v. Texas, 128 U. S. 129, was a case where a state statute required from "every commercial traveler, drummer, salesman, or solicitor of trade, by sample or otherwise, an annual occupation tax," and such legislation was declared inoperative so far as it affected one soliciting orders for a business house in another state. The same doctrine was held in Stoutenburgh v. Hennick, 129 U. S. 141, in the case of an agent of a Maryland business house soliciting orders in the District of Columbia without having taken out a license as required by an act of the Legislative Assembly of the District of Columbia.
"The character of police regulation, claimed for the requirements of the statute in question, is certainly not such as to give them a controlling force over the regulations of interstate commerce which may have been expressly or impliedly adopted by Congress, or such as to exempt them from nullity when repugnant to the exclusive power given to Congress in relation to that commerce. This is abundantly shown by the decisions to which we have already referred, which are clear to the effect that neither licenses nor indirect taxation of any kind, nor any system of state regulation, can be imposed upon interstate, any more than upon foreign, commerce, and that all acts of legislation producing any such result are, to that extent, unconstitutional and void."
"that all persons canvassing or soliciting, within said city [of Titusville], orders for goods, books, paintings, wares, or merchandise of any kind, or persons delivering such articles under orders so obtained or solicited, shall be required to procure from the mayor a license to transact said business, and shall pay the said treasurer therefor the following sums, according to the time for which said licenses shall be granted,"
frames, upon a salary; that, upon receiving orders for pictures and picture frames, the agents of Shepard forwarded the same to him at Chicago, where the goods were made, and from there shipped to the purchasers in Titusville by railroad freight and express, and the price of said goods was collected and forwarded by the express companies and sometimes by the agents to said Shepard at Chicago; that Brennan, the agent employed by Shepard, was engaged in conducting the business in the manner stated at the time of his arrest, and acting solely for Shepard.
"It is strongly urged, as if it were a material point in the case, that no discrimination is made between domestic and foreign drummers -- those of Tennessee and those of other states; that all are taxed alike. But that does not meet the difficulty. Interstate commerce cannot be taxed at all, even though the same amount of tax should be laid on domestic commerce, or that which is carried on solely within the state. This was decided in the case of State Freight Tax, 15 Wall. 232. The negotiation of sales of goods which are in another state, for the purpose of introducing them into the state in which the negotiation is made, is interstate commerce. A New Orleans merchant cannot be taxed there for ordering goods in London or New York because, in the one case it is an act of foreign, and in the other of interstate commerce, both of which are subject to regulation by Congress alone."
The last case we shall cite is the recent one of Stockard v. Morgan, 185 U. S. 27, where was considered the validity of a statute of the State of Tennessee providing for the collection of a privilege tax on the occupation of merchandise brokers.
By agreement of the parties, two questions only were argued in the state court: (1) whether or not the complainants, who had filed a bill to restrain the collection of the tax, were merchandise brokers and subject by the statute to tax as such; (2) whether or not their business constituted interstate commerce, and therefore was beyond the reach of the state's taxing power. The state supreme court held that the complainants, as merchandise brokers, were within the meaning of the statute, and that the tax was a valid one under the Constitution of the United States.
This Court, though recognizing that it was obliged to accept the construction put upon the statute by the state court, reversed the judgment of that court in respect to the nature of the commerce as interstate. In the opinion of the court, delivered by MR. JUSTICE PECKHAM, the principal cases, beginning with Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat. 419, and ending with Brennan v. Titusville, were again reviewed, and the conclusions there reached were affirmed.
should hold, as it was held there, that it was an interference with interstate commerce, and that the defendant was not guilty. But, to our minds, there is a decided difference between this case and that. The contract to make and deliver these pictures was an executory contract, and no title passed by this contract. . . . If they had been completed in Chicago, and under contract shipped to the purchaser, the title would have passed to the consignee upon delivery to the railroad in Chicago, the railroad being deemed to be the agent of the consignee, . . . and Brennan v. Titusville would have applied, as the tax would have been upon the commerce. But, instead of completing the pictures in Chicago and shipping them to the parties who had contracted for them, they were shipped to itself (the Chicago Portrait Company) in Greensboro. This being so, no title ever passed from the Chicago Portrait Company, until the pictures were put in the frames and delivered by the defendant. These pictures belonged to the Chicago company when they were shipped from Chicago, and belonged to it when they got to Greensboro. And the question is could the Chicago Portrait Company, because it was a foreign corporation, engage in the business of completing these pictures, and in selling and delivering them in Greensboro, without becoming liable to a city tax, for which its own citizens would be liable? It seems to us that it could not."
condition of articles of commerce, if shipped directly to the purchasers, cannot subject them to the license tax.
But we are not disposed to concede that, under the facts of this case, the pictures were, in any proper sense, incomplete when received in Greensboro. That the frames and the pictures were in separate packages, if such was the case, was merely for convenience in packing and handling, and "placing the pictures in their proper places" (the language of the verdict), meant that each picture was placed in the frame designed for it. The selection of the frame was as much a part of the purchase and sale as the selection of the picture.
Transactions between manufacturing companies in one state, through agents, with citizens of another, constitute a large part of interstate commerce, and for us to hold, with the court below, that the same articles, if sent by rail directly to the purchaser, are free from state taxation, but, if sent to an agent to deliver, are taxable through a license tax upon the agent, would evidently take a considerable portion of such traffic out of the salutary protection of the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution.
municipal ordinances, but that such efforts have been heretofore rendered fruitless by the supervising action of this Court. The cases hereinbefore cited disclose the truth of this observation.
Reversed, and the cause is remanded to that court to take further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

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