Melville Fuller

“ Much less even is the business of selling meats at retail, as ordinary butchers do. Yet, in the opinion of the court, the company was doing a meat-packing house business within the state. In the view of the minority, the business done within the state must be a meat-packing business, and not the business of selling meats, either at wholesale or retail; and when the meat-packing house is accurately defined in the stipulation, and no part of the business thus defined appears to have been done within the state, it is impossible to support the tax. ”

“ And so it appears that in North Carolina, at the points where the Armour Packing Company is engaged in business, and at other places in the state, there are establishments engaged in business, which pack articles of food other than meats, such as peas, beans, pumpkins, etc., and offer them for sale; but we cannot accept the suggestion that the statute is void as denying the equal protection of the laws to meat-packing houses because houses packing vegetables and the like are not included in the same classification, and subject to the same tax. ”

“ As we have frequently held, the state has the right to classify occupations, and to impose different taxes upon different occupations. Such has been constantly the practice of Congress under the internal revenue laws. ”