Court Opinion

ID: 6548835
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-19 22:22:09.276626+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:56:02.994754
License: Public Domain

Frauenthal, J., (after stating the facts). The facts of these cases are identical in every essential particular, except one, with the facts of the case of Crenshaw v. State, 95 Ark. 464, in which a prosecution for the violation of this statute was considered and a conviction thereunder sustained. The particular in which these cases apparently differ from the Crenshaw case is that in the case at bar the vehicles were separately tagged with the names of the respective purchasers at the time they were placed on board the cars at Memphis, Tennessee. The vehicles, however, were loaded and transported in one shipment and consigned to the Spaulding Manufacturing Company at Jonesboro, where they were unloaded and thereafter delivered to the purchasers who, only after inspection and acceptance, received them. In the Crenshaw case, the ranges were not tagged or noted with the names of the purchasers at the time they were delivered to the common carrier at St. Louis. We do not think that the tagging of the vehicles with the names of the persons executing orders therefor, under the facts adduced in these cases, distinguishes them from the Crenshaw case in any particular that would declare the evidence in these cases lacking in any ingredient essential to constitute a violation of this statute, or that it would make the shipment a subject-matter of interstate commerce any more than the shipment involved in the Crenshaw case. The gist of the offense created by this statute does not consist in making sales without license but in peddling without license. As is held in the case of Crenshaw v. State, supra, in order to constitute peddling, there must be the element of travelling from place to place, over and through the county, for the purpose of making sales. The statute does not declare it an offense to make sales, nor does it seek to impose a license fee or tax on sales, but only makes it an offense for one to go about from place to place, from residence to residence, in arid through the county in the prosecution of a wayfaring business, without procuring license, whether in making sales or in taking orders. As was said relative to a statute quite similar to this by the Supreme Court of the United States: “Its object in requiring peddlers to take out and pay for licenses and to exhibit their licenses on demand to any peace officer or to any citizen householder of the county appears to have been to protect the citizens of the State against the cheats and frauds and even thefts which, as the experience of ages has shown, are likely to attend itinerant and irresponsible peddling from place to place and from door to door.” Emert v. Missouri, 156 U. S. 296. This statute is directed at an itinerant occupation which may endanger the peace and safety of the citizens of the State, and not at a business which only involves the sale of property. It is but the exercise of the police power of the State, and, as was said in the above case of Emert v. Missouri, supra, “it is nowise repugnant to the power of Congress to regulate commerce among the several States, but is a valid exercise of the power of the State over persons in business within its borders.” The question as to the place at which the sale was made and at which the title to the property passed is not essentially different in these cases from that involved in the Crenshaw case; because in these cases it was provided in the orders given by the prospective purchasers of the vehicles that they were purchased in effect upon condition that when the vehicles were delivered to them in Greene County they should be approved by them after an inspection and acceptance thereof. So that the sales were not really consummated until the purchasers actually had inspected and accepted the ‘vehicles in Greene County. The mere fact that the vehicles were tagged m the names of the prospective purchasers when the shipment was made at Memphis did not change 'the character of the act committed by these defendants, which consisted in going from house to house and residence to residence throughout the county in taking the orders, and thus in peddling. It is true that in the case of Crenshaw v. State, supra, the case of Rearick v. Pennsylvania, 203 U. S. 507, is referred to, and this court stated that the facts in that case differed from the Crenshaw case in that the ranges in the Crenshaw case were not tagged with the names of the purchasers. But the court did not base its opinion in that case upon the ground that the ranges were not tagged in the names of the purchasers, or that the Rearick case was decisive in event the ranges had been so tagged. It based its decision upon the ground that the act of peddling prohibited by this statute without license consisted in going about from place to place, over and through the county, for the purpose of making sales; that the statute regulating such acts was but the exercise of the police power of the State in protecting its citizens; that it in nowise affected interstate commerce or any business or thing which was the subject-matter of interstate commerce. We are of the opinion that the facts in the cases at bar are, in every essential particular, analagous to those in the Crenshaw case. In the Crenshaw case the constitutionality of this peddling statute, under similar facts and conditions, was upheld, and we see no reason for changing that decision. It has been held by the Supreme Court of the United States that State statutes requiring that notes, otherwise negotiable instruments, the consideration for which is a patent right or patented article, should be executed in a prescribed manner or otherwise be invalid as negotiable paper or even void, are not in contravention of any provision of the Federal Constitution or of any power given to Congress to legislate relative to the subject-matter of such transactions. This ruling is based upon the ground that such State legislation is but the exercise of the police power of the State in the protection of its citizens against-fraud and imposition, which common experience has shown can be more easily perpetrated in cases where the sale of patent rights and patented articles is the subject-matter of the transaction. Allen v. Riley, 203 U. S. 347; Woods v. Carl, 203 U. S. 385; Ozan Lumber Co. v. Union County Bank, 207 U. S. 251. In the latter case it is said: “The various itinerant venders of patented articles, whose fluency of speech and carelessness regarding the truth of their representations might almost be said to have become proverbial, were of course in the mind of the Legislature, and were included in this legislation. Indeed they are the principal people to be affected by it.” In the latter case the transaction involved a contract of sale concerning a matter which was the subject of interstate commerce; and while the question as to whether or not such State legislation relative to patent notes was affected by reason of the fact that the patented article sold was shipped in interstate commerce was not expressly passed on in the opinion rendered by the Federal Supreme Court, it does appear to have met the attention .of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals in that case, and is there noted. Union County Bank v. Ozan Lumber Co., 179 Fed. 710. But in those cases legislation of this character is recognized as a valid police regulation enacted by the State for the peace and security of its citizens. The peddling statute of this State, we think, is legislation of that character, and is for that reason valid. The judgments are accordingly affirmed. Wood, J., dissents.