Horace Gray

“ In a case under that statute, Chief Justice Shaw said: 'The leading, primary idea of a 'hawker and peddler' is that of an itinerant or traveling trader, who carries goods about, in order to sell them, and who actually sells them to purchasers, in contradistinction to a trader who has goods for sale and sells them in a fixed place of business. ”

“ When goods are sent from one state to another for sale, or in consequence of a sale, they become part of its general property, and amenable to its laws, provided that no discrimination be made against them as goods from another state, and that they be not taxed by reason of being brought from another state, but only taxed in the usual way as other goods are. ”

“ It makes no discrimination between residents or products of Missouri and those of other states, and manifests no intention to interfere in any way with interstate commerce. 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, or 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. ”

“ In Michigan a city ordinance, passed under authority of the legislature, prohibiting peddling without a license from the mayor, was held constitutional, and Chief Justice Cooley said: 'That the regulation of hawkers and peddlers is important, if not absolutely essential, may be taken as established by the concurring practice of civilized states. They are a class of persons who travel from place to place among strangers, and the business may easily be made a pretense or a convenience to those whose real purpose is theft or fraud. ”

“ Justice Miller, that a uniform tax imposed by ordinance of the city of Mobile, under authority from the legislature of Alabama, on all sales by auction in the city, was constitutional, because it was 'a simple tax on sales of merchandise, imposed alike upon all sales made in Mobile, whether the sales be made by a citizen of Alabama or of another state, and whether the goods sold are the produce of that state or some other. There is no attempt to discriminate injuriously against the products of other states, or the rights of their citizens ”

“ The license is required to state how the dealing is to be carried on,-whether on foot, or with one or more beasts of burden, a cart or wagon, or a boat or vessel,-and may be obtained by any person paying the tax prescribed, according to the manner in which the business is carried on. Sections 6473, 6476, 6477. Any person dealing as a peddler, without a license, whether with a pack, a wagon, or a boat, is to pay a certain penalty, which, in the case of pedling in a cart or wagon, is $50. ”

“ The statute of Missouri now before the court omits the discriminating words, 'which are not the growth, produce or manufacture of this state,' upon which that decision was grounded.
In Cook v. Pennsylvania (1878) 97 U.S. 566, in which a tax upon auctioneers, measured by the amount of their sales, was held to be invalid as to sales by auction of imported goods in the original package, the statute under which the tax was imposed made a discrimination against imported, as compared with domestic, goods ”

“ The Howe Machine Company, a corporation of Connecticut, manufactured sewing machines at Bridgeport, in that state, and had an office at Nashville, in the state of Tennessee, and sent an agent into Sumner county for the purpose of selling or peddling machines, who traveled through the country in a wagon, with one horse, for the purpose of exhibiting and offering for sale the company's machines. ”

“ After congress had thus, as said by the chief justice, 'declared that imported liquors or liquids shall, upon arrival in a state, fall within the category of domestic articles of a similar nature,' this court unanimously held that intoxicating liquors brought into a state before this act of congress, were subject to the operation of the earlier statutes of the state remaining unrepealed. ”