Court Opinion

ID: 9865352
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:32:41.296776+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:38:31.444030
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Hilliard
dissenting.
l am convinced that sections 107 and 109, chapter 131, ’35 C. S. A., the statutes upon which the court’s opinion is based, do not have to do with “goods, wares or merchandise manufactured, produced or mined” by individual convicts working for themselves, as in the present case. Rather, as I conceive, the purpose of the legislation, and solely so, was to prevent the state, as such, proceeding by and through mass convict and unpaid labor, from manufacturing or producing goods, wares or merchandise to be offered for sale in competition with merchandise of like manufacture or production by private industry, necessarily burdened with the cost of *96labor. I think the case should have been tried on the merits, and that the judgment on the pleadings ought to be reversed.