Charles Evans Hughes

“ The fact that the growers are not bound to accept bids, and in certain instances reject them, does not remove the auction from its immediate relation to the sales that are consummated upon the offers that the growers do accept. The auction in such cases is manifestly a part of the transaction of sale. So far as the sales are for shipment to other States or to foreign countries, it is idle to contend that they are not sales in interstate or foreign commerce and subject to congressional regulation. ”

“ First.-Plaintiffs urge that tobacco 'is not inherently an interstate commodity'; that the auction transaction is not a sale as title is not passed until the grower accepts the price; that after the auction the grower may, and often does, reject the bid and he may take his tobacco away; that the inspection required by the Act is done prior to the offering for sale; and that until sale and delivery to the purchaser the tobacco is not in interstate commerce and its control is reserved to the State. ”

“ The Secretary of Agriculture is authorized to investigate the handling, inspection and marketing of tobacco and to establish standards by which its type, grade, size, condition, or other characteristics may be determined and these standards are to be the official standards of the United States, Secs. 3, 4.
The Secretary is authorized to designate those markets where tobacco bought and sold at auction or the products customarily manufactured therefrom move in commerce. He is not to designate a market unless two-thirds of the growers, voting at a prescribed referendum, favor it. ”

“ If it be assumed that there might be discrimination of such an injurious character as to bring into operation the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, that is a different matter from a contention that mere lack of uniformity in the exercise of the commerce power renders the action of Congress invalid. ”

“ The record shows that the sales consummated on the Oxford auction market are predominantly sales in interstate and foreign commerce. The principal purchasers are few in number and in the main are engaged in the export trade or in the manufacture of tobacco products in other States. It appears that in a given week, shortly before the beginning of this suit, approximately 2,000,000 pounds of tobacco were sold on the Oxford market, only 15.3 per cent. of which were definitely destined for manufacture in North Carolina. ”

“ We have said that-'The Constitution has never been regarded as denying to the Congress the necessary resources of flexibility and practicality, which will enable it to perform its function in laying down policies and establishing standards, while leaving to selected instrumentalities the making of subordinate rules within prescribed limits and the determination of facts to which the policy as declared by the Legislature is to apply. ”

“ The fact that intrastate and interstate transactions are commingled on the tobacco market does not frustrate or restrict the congressional power to protect and control what is committed to its own care. ”

“ They say that warehousemen on other tobacco markets in North Carolina, doing the same sort of business and competing for patronage among the same growers, are at liberty to conduct sales in their warehouses without inspection and certification.
The reason for the selection is shown. The lack of a sufficient number of expert inspectors made it impracticable to supply inspection and grading at all tobacco auction markets. ”

“ It applies to transactions involving the sale of tobacco at auction as commonly conducted at auction markets. These transactions are carried on by tobacco producers and by persons engaged in the business of buying and selling tobacco in commerce as defined, that is, in commerce which is interstate or foreign or is with or within the Territories or the District of Columbia. [4] Congress finds that the classification of tobacco according to type, grade, and other characteristics affects the prices received ”

“ While in a sense one may say that such residents are exercising legislative power, it is not an exact statement, because the power has already been exercised legislatively by the body vested with that power under the Constitution, the condition of its legislation going into effect being made dependent by the legislature on the expression of the voters of a certain district'. ”

“ The growers, to be sure, may take their tobacco where they please. But even if it were assumed that the contention that the markets subject to the inspection provision would lose patronage could afford ground for resisting this sort of regulation, otherwise valid, the claim in this instance rests more on conjecture than on proof. ”

“ We agree with the Circuit Court of Appeals that as to the asserted difference of prices obtainable on inspected markets, as compared with those not inspected, the evidence has little probative value and that the loss of business from growers who do not desire the inspection would seem by the record to be more than counterbalanced by the gain of business from those who desire it. ”

“ Without capacity to give authorizations of that sort we should have the anomaly of a legislative power which in many circumstances calling for its exertion would be but a futility'. Panama Refining Co. ”